


Last Orders

by feeltherain



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-19
Updated: 2011-05-19
Packaged: 2017-10-19 14:37:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feeltherain/pseuds/feeltherain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the pressures of life get too much for him, Martin begins to drink. Far too heavily for Douglas' liking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to [crocodile_eat_u](http://crocodile-eat-u.livejournal.com/) who was such an incredibly patient beta and helped me with the story and well yeh was amazing basically.
> 
> written for a [this prompt](http://cabinpres-fic.livejournal.com/728.html?thread=304600#t304600) over on LJ. I really really hope this is to the OP's liking and tht it isnt too rubbish or too long.
> 
> trigger warnings in this fic for alcoholism.

You slam the door on your already hammering headache and slump down on the sofa only a few steps away from the door. You always did think the flat was too small but it’s the best you can do with the funds at your disposal. You sit on the lumpy, faded fabric, wringing your hands, contemplating. A client for the van fell through. You needed that money. The rent’s due.

Leaping off the sofa in a burst of energy that rattles your head and makes you pause to steady yourself, you eventually manage to begin a search of the cupboards in the kitchen, after the kitchen stops spinning that is. Predictably the cupboards are bare, bar the cups and plates, ruthlessly cleaned, and the glasses, gleaming. Upon continued searching, the cupboard under the sink yields an unopened bottle of vodka. You regard it for a while and think about the rent and the van and your bank balance. _Hell_ , you think, _I think I’m allowed to after today. Anyway, one can’t hurt_.

You wake up to a white blinding light and panic, fearing your end has come and you had so much still to do. But it’s just the sun streaming cheerily through the window, calling for you to greet the new day. You tell it to bugger off and try to curl into your covers as usual, but instead end up crashing gracelessly and painfully onto the floor. You open your eyes properly, rubbing at your head, realising that not only are you not in your bed, you aren’t even in your bedroom. At the moment you’re in a confused heap on the floor but you were curled up on the sofa with an empty bottle of vodka nestled in the crook of your arm.

The more you wake, the more you notice the hangover waking with you. A dull ache begins to throb, given impetus by your sudden dizziness. The sun creates spots in your vision as revenge for your cursing and you find yourself turning away from it, hissing in pain like a vampire in a hammer horror film. It’s not going to be a good day.

You march like a zombie around the flat shutting out as much light as you can manage then huddle under a blanket, leaning against the sofa. Eyes closed and sitting perfectly still, you feel serene. Even the headache seems to have gone back to bed. Then the couple on the floor below start up a row you seem to remember hearing the beginnings of last night, and it’s back, in full force. Like a sledgehammer. You wince and stare at the vodka bottle resting innocently next to the table leg. _Never again_ , you tell it, _never, ever again_.

***

The next time involves you stumbling out of a pub at two o’ clock in the morning, propped up by a friend who has drawn the short straw. You hadn’t meant it to go that far. Never, ever again has vanished as a concept two days previously when Carolyn shouted at you after a passenger’s complaint, so you don’t feel too bad when you allow yourself to be coerced into a trip to the pub to celebrate a promotion. You haven’t seen Jake in a while, don’t know why you’d been invited but anything is better than wallowing in your flat.

One drink you say, with every intention of sticking to it, despite the exuberant nature of the new director of sales. But then there is a phone call from your brother. He always has the worst timing. Upon returning to the table with a sour expression, a drink has been pushed in your direction. A well meant attempt at distraction. Pity it’s worked too well, really. Ironic that the poor friend who had pushed you that drink had drawn the short straw. Or fitting, maybe. You get home safely this time and wake up at 6:00 with a throbbing headache and a disgruntled first officer pounding at your door. Another long day to look forward to.

***

After a small break from MJN and a sudden rush on students moving their things for university, you finally have the money and time to do a proper shop. The essentials are in first, of course, bread, milk, cheese. You can never choose the last one without a wry smile and a soft giggle.

Eventually you get through the list, with the total added up and triple checked in the margin, and you turn a corner to find yourself ambushed by the wines and spirits. You did finish that bottle of vodka. And there hasn’t been any wine in your flat since you used four bottles to numb the loneliness of seeing the New Year in on your own. According to the neat numbers in the margin you could afford to, just one bottle of cheap vodka or rum maybe, for variety.   
You brush your fingers along the cool curves of a bottle of own brand white rum, feeling your throat go a little dry. But you shake your head. Not this time. It would be foolish to waste the spare money when it comes so rarely. You know that. But a part of you still pulls at you as you walk away to the tills, the part that makes you turn and look back and walk into an angry looking woman. Even after you’ve left the shop there’s still a nagging feeling. Luckily it goes as soon as the van stalls and your attention is on pleading with it not to break down.

***

You hate it when smoke gets in your eyes at work. Usually it’s because of a grumpy passenger who won’t adhere to the rules because for some stupid reason they think they don’t apply to them. It is a Russian this time. Just as rude as Mr. Lehman but fortunately most of the insults were in Russian. Apart from ‘pretend pilot’ which had been spat out at the end.

You stand there for a while blinking to try to dissipate the water pooling in your eyes but it doesn’t work and you have to get a drink to cover wiping away the tears. A strong hand claps you on your shoulder and you turn your head to see Douglas smiling at you without the usual sardonic smirk. You relax a little until you realise that it means the flight deck is unmanned and start muttering about inattentive pilots, rushing back to the console. Settling quickly back into your seat, you glance around, making sure nothing’s malfunctioned in the few seconds Gertie was left to her own devices.

“The horizon still where you left it?”

“Yes, fortunately,” you grumble.

“You know I fear you underestimate poor Gertie.”

“I don’t know. Any aircraft that gives a ground proximity warning while we’re on the ground doesn’t inspire confidence.”

“True. But she’s dispelled her fear of heights recently.”

You fall into a sulky silence, still more upset than you want to admit in front of Douglas, or anyone for that matter.

“You could always get Arthur to fire extinguisher him to death, you know,” he offers. You laugh at the thought, almost considering it as a viable option.

“I don’t think MJN could handle the death of another smoker. Could look suspicious.”

“I think Carolyn would back you up. I heard him calling her something obviously not particularly complimentary in Russian and caught the sour expression.”

“She doesn’t speak Russian.”

“Evidently that word she was familiar with,” he says, unable to stop smiling at the memory of Carolyn’s scowl.

“We could start an MJN policy. Clearing the world of insulting businessmen.”

“That would certainly be a niche market. We could always make it an added service.”

“And put it in our brochure?”

“When booking a flight with MJN don’t forget to tick the box for their hitman service to rid yourself of unwanted   
smokers.”

You both laugh a bit too loudly and don’t stop fully until you’re safely landed in Fitton. As the clean up gets underway you catch sight of Douglas sneaking off.

“Douglas,” you call out. He stops and looks back, expecting you to admonish him and tell him to help tidy. “Thank you,” you say instead. He smiles at you and nods before making good his escape.

 

Back at home you start to dwell. Your dinner is the best you could have made of the remains from the last big shop you did and it’s passable, better than Arthur’s cooking at any rate, which isn’t saying much. You look at the stripes on your sleeve and the hat resting unknowingly on the coffee table and hear the words ‘pretend pilot’ in a thick Russian accent.

For a while you just sit on the edge of your sofa, fiddling with your keys. When the couple downstairs start up another row, that’s when you decide. You grab the keys and run out of the door, out of the building, down the street and into the off licence.

***

A month later, you trudge into your dingy flat, slump onto the sofa and reach for the bottle of vodka that lives on your coffee table. Liquid comfort. A friend who will never leave you. You pour a single measure into the waiting glass and send it down your throat in one practiced flick of the wrist, feeling it trickle down and spread its warmth kindly.

At least you have the rent money this month. The van is working well, touch wood, and so far MJN hasn’t been too much of a press on your time. But that’s part of the problem. It allows you time to think. You start to miss the business of life with the airline. Carolyn’s complaints about money, Arthur’s childlike stupidity, Douglas’ sarcasm. You might even be persuaded, with another measure of vodka, which you promptly pour out and swallow, that deep inside, you miss the game of charades.

Then the thoughts come to you, the questions. Why don’t you have a proper job? Why aren’t you being paid as a pilot? Why do you have to go around with your dad’s old van to make a living? Why are you such a failure?

The answer, to you, is simple: because you are you. There is nothing about you which means that you could ever succeed. Nothing about you that makes you worthwhile. Haven’t people been telling you that for years? Probably.

That’s your answer but you don’t want it. You think that maybe there is another answer, a better one, at the bottom of this bottle in front of you. It’ll be easy to find. You just need to get rid of the vodka that’s in the way first.

***

Another month passes and you throw yourself past the threshold of your flat, kicking the door shut behind you with contempt and ignoring the angry knocking of the neighbours at the sudden noise. Money is tight again, MJN has been keeping you busy. MJN is a double edged sword, but you love it all the same. Sometimes you feel you couldn’t face life without it.

Ah, vodka. It has become a favourite of yours, that spirit. You reach for the bottle, resting on its podium of the dusty table and take a swift swig. The glass lays forgotten, relegated to the draining board with all the other washing up you haven’t had time to do.

You take another swig and let your head fall back to rest on the sofa, leaning your arms on your knees. Vodka, you know you couldn’t live your life without that. But the thought causes you to pause. You wonder if there is an issue with this. This companionship you feel in your solitude. The companionship for an inanimate object that you can share your woes with, who won’t judge and will always listen. But it’s cold, too, unlike a human. It has no voice, it can’t give you advice or make a profound remark veiled in sarcasm. Oh God.

You’re thinking about him again. And thinking about him means another drink. You obey to your self-imposed forfeit system. One you put in place only a short while after you began to notice the flutter of your heart whenever you looked at him, a long time after the drink became a shoulder to cry on.

The thoughts still drift to him. Even more so when your body is warmed with spirit and your soul warmed by the false hope and fake confidence. You wonder briefly if the forfeit system is merely an excuse to drink more. One to cover up the fact that once you begin, you’re finding it increasingly hard to stop. Of course not. You aren’t that sort of person. You don’t have a problem.

Do you?

***

When he first kisses you, you are drunk. Very drunk. Catatonic almost, whining and howling into his shirt about money troubles and arguments with your family. Until your energy has run down and you rest yourself against his shoulder, steady and firm, a perfect counterpoint for your hunched, shuddering form.

His head has dropped onto the top of yours, radiating a soothing heat, relaxing you until the flood subsides and the water dries on your face and his polyester. The minutes that you have stayed like that have been wonderful. Peaceful and tranquil and so calming in the hush that descends when even the background noises of the world seemed to quieten.

Then you feel the warmth taken away and look up to see him looking down at you, a curious light in his eye. You gaze obliviously at him until he begins to come closer, until he is very close indeed and his lips are on yours and the warmth isn’t just back, it is so much better.

And you kiss back. It takes you a while, yes, but you still kiss back, pressing against his lips and smiling into the contact because you can’t help yourself, it is wonderful. You’re pretty sure you are grinning when you both finally part because he looks at you oddly then smiles with fondness and something else. You are probably still grinning, you admit sheepishly, when you then collapse backwards onto the bed and know no more until you wake up a few minutes later to see Douglas’ smirking visage. Only for a moment, though, because very soon after you wake to the smirk, you moan as a thin ray of light from the window falls onto your eyes and Douglas laughs, which you think is unfair as you curl back under the covers, wrapping them around you like a cocoon. Not that you’d ever become a butterfly, not unless Douglas is there.

He mutters something now about lightweights and too much for such a small man. You don’t tell him about your empty stomach. You certainly don’t tell him how many you had last night. He doesn’t need to know.   
You feel a light poke at your ribs and carefully open a hole in the duvet cocoon to peer out at the smiling face illuminated by the sunrise. You feel your heart flutter and your headache dull as you emerge from the covers and look at him properly; now your eyes have adjusted to the light.

When he kisses you for a second time it’s much better. It is without the fog that the drink brought and you are perfectly awake afterwards, basking in the glow of his smile, your lips still tingling.   
You make a new vow when he turns to head to the bathroom. You vow to never drink again as you did last night. Instead of burying yourself in alcohol you will bury yourself in his smile and his eyes and his laughter. So much more intoxicating now you know you can have it.

You are doomed to fail, of course. But on a morning where the hot Mediterranean sun insinuates itself in the room through the garish curtains of a sub-standard hotel, optimism is in the air.

***

The first time you drink at work is two weeks later, in Crete. The weather is just too lovely and you spend a   
wonderful afternoon with Douglas actually showing his human side. You go for dinner somewhere that, while not exactly posh, is certainly better than the usual standard MJN pilots are subjected to. Arthur is sent off to annoy Carolyn who sends you a glare with goodwill hidden behind it. Hidden very well but Douglas spots it and alerts you to its presence. Not that you’d hoped to keep your sudden closeness from Carolyn, the all seeing ¬¬¬alpha dog, but you would have liked to have been able to tell her yourself. Nothing is ever simple with MJN.

Over dinner you perhaps have one too many glasses of wine. Being the only one drinking can facilitate this. What it also facilitates is the frown you have when the bill comes and Douglas pays for all of it.

You have money problems. It is a truth universally acknowledged, even by Arthur. Douglas understood that when he kissed you, when he told you he wanted to be with you. But you still can’t watch Douglas pay without imagining annoyance in the lines of his forehead. Even when he smiles at you, you see pointed allegation in the creases round his eyes.

All this is why you don’t follow him to his room as you had planned but instead say you are tired and are just going to go to bed. A blatant lie you aren’t sure he believes but he doesn’t challenge you about it, just kisses you goodnight and says he’ll see you in the morning.

You drown in vodka at the bar until three o’ clock when you realise you need to be awake in five hours and ready to fly a plane back to England. So you stagger away into the lift, using the rail to prop you up as it ascends at a relatively slow rate that makes your knees buckle so much you are practically on the floor when the lift stops and the doors open to a mercifully empty corridor.

Collapsing onto the bed that sinks alarmingly under your meagre weight, you contemplate your evening. The looks on Douglas’ face as he paid after the meal then when he’d bade you goodnight. The slightly financially counterproductive action you took by propping up the hotel bar for a good four hours. But in the end blankness comes and you fall into a sound, dreamless sleep.

 

In the morning you hide behind your new shades and cringe when Douglas greets you exuberantly. Carolyn mutters about you being a shoddy pilot at the best of times without being hung-over and Arthur stares at you with a sort of bafflement that is endearing in some ways.

When you look back at Douglas he is glaring at you. You’ve never felt so exposed in your life and you shrink even further into yourself as you push your breakfast around your plate. He continues to eye you throughout breakfast and only stops when you are safely in the air after takeoff.

You don’t talk about it. Neither of you. But you both wonder if your shades are becoming an all too frequent addition to your uniform.

***

The first time he has to save you comes three weeks later. You don’t drink in the hotel bars when you’re on overnight stays anymore, you wouldn’t be so unprofessional, not again anyway, and you don’t particularly relish another flight with Douglas and a hangover battling each for your attention. But after another long and debilitating argument with a member of your family, a drink is most definitely in order.

After said drink, and after ordering another, you allow a moment of reflection as to why you just broke your vow. _I haven’t_ , you argue, _I’m not burying myself in alcohol. I’m having a drink_. The barman chooses that moment to place a fresh glass in front of you. _Two_ , you concede, _I’m having two drinks_.

Silence.

 _He doesn’t want my problems_. You finish your drink, feeling a slight light-headedness as you order another.

 _He doesn’t want to be cried on again_. You finish your third drink and stare mournfully into the empty glass.

“Why does he want me?” you query despondently, not realising you said it aloud until it’s too late. You order your forth in a thin voice. The barman looks at you with something akin to sympathy. You only see disdain and glare at him in annoyance. You aren’t a case for pity.

When you pay you realise that was your last note. The loose collection of change might be enough to get you a vodka and tonic, but probably not. You swallow the last of your drink and despair at an evening cut short until another full glass appears next to your hands, brought by a barman who clearly feels it is a bad idea. When you question him he indicates a suited man at the end of the bar, who nods at you with a blinding smile and continues to sip from his tumbler.

You’re sure this is a cliché of some kind. Something that happens in films not real life. You’re also sure that in the films something bad happens to people on the receiving end, but after the four previous drinks swallowed in quick succession, your brain can’t summon the images of what the bad things are. Anyway, he can’t be that awful if he bought you a drink, and another once you finish that. To you it doesn’t matter that in the time it took you to finish those two, he isn’t even halfway through one.

The next few minutes happen in a blur. You giggle and smile as he orders you more alcohol. You don’t notice his hand on your knee at first. You don’t notice when it climbs higher, stroking along to the middle of your thigh. You don’t notice his eyes grow shadowed and the friendly smile on his face turn dark.

You do notice when his hand reaches your hip, when his fingers brush your groin. You look up, eyes wide like a rabbit caught in headlights, though everything you see is slightly blurred. He smiles at you and squeezes gently. You want to get away, run away as far as your legs will carry you, but in the state you’re in, that wouldn’t even get you to the door.

Then there’s a firm hand around his wrist and the pressure on your thigh is gone. His smile falters and when he hears the threat spoken quietly and calmly, it dies. He’s out the bar before you even notice him move and Douglas is sat in his place looking grave.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demands in the same voice he used on the man in the suit. You try to come up with a reply. Try to find a way to push words through the hurricane of thoughts leaving a trail of devastation and confusion in your mind. It seems the hesitation and the unfocused eyes give him his answer.

“Oh Martin,” he sighs, shaking his head. “Come on, it’s time you went to bed.”

He helps you to your room and stays with you, sat on the uncomfortable chair with broken springs all night ready to leap in if you woke to be sick or needing water. You sleep like a baby, blissfully unaware of anything. He watches you all night, thinking.

 _Why are you such an idiot?_ he thinks, _and why does that make me love you more?_

 

You wake to see Douglas making two cups of tea as quietly as he can.

“You looked like you wanted to punch him,” you mumble, looking around and noticing that the curtains have been pulled shut, blocking all the light. You feel a tightening in your chest and pray its gratitude and not a heart attack.

“I did,” he replies simply, still making the tea intently.

“Why didn’t you?” you ask after a pause.

“Because I don’t get into fights with people in bars, Martin. Not anymore.”

He turns and offers you a cup. He hands you two paracetamol with a blank face and retreats to the bathroom. He’s angry, you can tell that much through your pounding head. You even know why, or you think you do, you just don’t know how to make it right.

After you’ve taken the tablets and drink the tea, Douglas emerges, looking slightly calmer. He still ignores you though, (which is) annoying because you are doing your best puppy dog eyes in the hope of a pardon, or at least compassionate leave, from his mood. He finally looks at you, frowns then buckles and smiles.

“Idiot,” he mutters. You smile. It’s always easier when you’re ‘idiot’. Second only to ‘dolt’.

He climbs onto the bed next to you and folds his arms around you. You lean in close, nuzzling into the curve of his collar bone.

“I might not be there next time,” you hear him say. Or rather you feel him say it because he utters the words too quietly to really hear.

“There won’t be a next time,” you say firmly. He sighs like he doesn’t believe you. You frown.

“There won’t,” you vow. He kisses your temple.

“There had better not be.”

***

At two o’ clock in the morning, you should probably be in bed. You should be with his arms wrapped around you, so warm that you don’t need the blankets. You used to. You used to look forward to it, be buzzing with anticipation the whole flight, revelling in the casual touches he inflicted on you with his smug smirk. The sex is mind-blowing, of course it is, but it’s always the aftermath you like best. When only the background noises of life could be heard above your breathing as you lie together, content and blissful, holding on for dear life.

The hotel bar seems sinister without focus. Shadows dance around you, start crowding closer in the haze. The barman’s giving you sideways glances (which make) you bristle, see concern as condemnation. Indignantly you slap your last coins on the counter and stumble to the lift. You hear people talking quietly in the lobby and twist around to see who it is, if they are talking about you. You don’t see anyone. But you can still hear the gossipy mutterings.

By the time you’ve successfully made it up to your room and extracted your key from a fiddly pocket, your brain has had a chance to fight back, a chance to push some of your common sense past the alcohol fuelled fog. Only a little, but enough to tell you that you can’t face him like this. You can’t crawl into bed and push yourself up close to him so you can feel every pore of his skin when you’re in the state you’re in. He won’t want you like this. That isn’t your brain talking but for the moment you think it is and a freezing wave of despair hits you so hard you collapse to the floor, tears streaming down your face, key held to the lock with one hand.

In the end you spend the night walking aimlessly in the cold air until you feel a bit more entitled to be near to him, to slip into bed next to him and curl an arm around his waist and nuzzle into his neck without filling his nostrils with the cloying scent of spirits. He doesn’t stir as you do, as you hold him close and send him silent apologies and tell him it won’t happen again. You wonder if you have a problem. If it’s becoming one. You wonder if he knows, but you don’t wonder that for very long, bearing in mind who it is you’re thinking of. The answer would surprise you: he doesn’t know. Not for certain. Not yet.

***

It hurts, the loneliness. The empty feeling that worms its way through your gut and gnaws at your intestines when the sun’s gone down and the cold breeze blows. When he’s not there and there’s no booking for the van. When your flat is empty and suddenly seems too big despite it being no bigger than a shoe box. It’s then that you start to dwell. You start to hate the way your life has gone, that you aren’t getting paid for doing what you love and that you are forced to do what you swore you never would since the day your father suggested the idea, just to get by.

Douglas never makes a comment about paying on dates; he never asks if you wanted to split the bill, assuming instead that he will pay, even after all this time. It shames you, and after the last time you insist that you pay your half. You may have forgotten pride when listing the seven deadly sins, but it never leaves you.   
Reflecting now, the decision may have been a little hasty. Business is slow, the van is struggling on but it is in bad need of a mechanic, if only you could afford one. You always swore you’d pay your way when you started seeing him, you would refuse any offer of financial help that even remotely smells of charity, but you never realised it would get so hard. Maybe you should stop drinking. The thought makes you shudder.

You used to drink a bit when you were studying for your exams and a lot when you failed them. After your dad died, too, you shied away from the family gathering early and secreted yourself in an anonymous corner of the local pub. After joining MJN you were better. You were doing what you loved with people you could tolerate and after what you viewed was an obligatory session with a vodka bottle or two to lament the pay arrangements, you were okay. Only okay, yes, but okay wasn’t waking up flat on your face on the unhygienic floor of your flat with no recollection of getting home.

Then it all started getting to you. You begrudgingly accepted that you needed to put the dilapidated van back to work if you were going to keep the leaking roof over your head, being able to fix the leak was a bit too ambitious at that stage, but then even that had problems. Too many long flights, too little time to earn money with the wretched van. Too little sleep, too much stress, too little money, too much pride to ask anyone for help. When you first reached for that vodka bottle discovered like an ancient relic under the sink, you told yourself it was just one drink. You didn’t need to drown your sorrows, you grew out of that years ago.

Then the self-loathing started, if it ever stopped. The horrible, crawling feeling under your skin that makes you sick every time you think about how you aren’t getting paid or that you hadn’t had sex in months or that your brother still called you by the childish nicknames he made up when you were ten. The vodka stops the worms that seem to be wriggling under your skin and stops your brain from thinking. About anything. At all. Maybe that isn’t such a brilliant effect but not thinking about anything means you aren’t thinking about how much you want to cry.

Douglas helps without realising it. He still teases, he’s still the sarcastic know it all he always is and he still makes sure you lose whatever bet you enter into. But he’s there. A reliable presence you know will always be available to curl up next to and to cuddle with after a long, tiring flight, or to kiss and press hotly against when the mood takes you. Wanting someone is not new. Being wanted in return is and it’s so wonderful and so addictive that it’s so nearly enough to keep you away from drinking.

Except when it gets too much again and the self hatred is back and you can’t tell him. You can’t let him know how you feel, how much it hurts, how tired it all makes you of everything because you are so scared that he won’t want you anymore, that he’ll cut his losses and leave and Carolyn will fire you because Douglas is after all the better pilot, and you’ll never get another job and have to live off the earnings from the van until it finally gives out and then you’re really stuffed.

No, best to keep quiet on balance. Best to just have a few drinks until the thoughts go away and you can be cheerful with minimum effort so convincingly that no one can tell the difference. No one except Douglas, anyway, whose been eyeing you a lot recently.

At least in your own flat you can go for broke. You can down shots of vodka or just take deep swigs from the bottle if you’re feeling lazy. You don’t have beers if you’ve got whiskey or vodka in, you learned from that mistake after you spent four hours hunched over your toilet then another five passed out next to it. You’ve been sick after drinking too much before, but never like that.

Now you are sitting in a bit of a daze with a bottle of what proclaims itself to be pinot noir in your hand, you are partial to wine on occasion, the bottle three quarters empty. You hear your phone ringing distantly. You dimly remember setting your ringtone as ‘come fly with me’ but you’re sure that’s not what you’re hearing now.

Once the bottle is done and another half finished, the phone has rung three times more, your landline having rung twice as well, and you decide that maybe if someone is that committed to talking to you, it’s only polite to speak to them. The fact that you actually can’t speak at this stage doesn’t occur to you of course. You lean forward to begin the hunt only to fall on your face and descend into unconsciousness. Your phone rings again. You don’t hear it.

 

Six hours later you wake up on the floor next to the sofa, limbs splayed in a position they would never naturally find themselves in and protesting vehemently at being subjected to such contortion. It’s raining outside, apparently. You can hear the raindrops as they attack the window as loud and clear as a bell ringing and they beat steadily against your skull, but there is no aggressively joyful sunlight to blind you.

You sort out your limbs into a more normal arrangement and begin to think back on the previous night. It’s then that you realise something. There’s nothing there. Nothing but a yawning cavern of black that makes up the evening in your memory. You feel a panic rising into the insistent ache of your hangover and close your eyes to examine the blackness further, ready to get the fine toothed comb out if necessary.

There must be something. There can’t be nothing. There has to be some memory even a fragment of one. But there isn’t. There truly is nothing. You shiver though it’s still only September. You haven’t eaten properly in a few days, maybe that’s the reason. Yes, that must be it. You cling to that as an explanation but, all the same, you begin to wonder. Your eyes fall on the empty wine bottle lying on the floor and its half empty friend standing behind it.

No. Definitely the lack of food.

***

You’re laughing. You’re not quite sure what at but whatever it is, it’s hilarious. There’s a vague outline of a person next to you and you think they are laughing too, but that could just be echoes of your guffaws.

The shape disappears suddenly. Or maybe it left a while ago, you’re not sure. The only thing you can focus on is the glass in your hand that’s starting to look suspiciously empty. Maybe another one is in order. Yeah. Another won’t hurt, it’s not like you’re driving home. You’re still not talking to the van. It stalled one too many times and you sent it to Coventry. Not literally, that would be foolish. You’ve learnt from that mistake. One of the few mistakes you did learn from.

While you wait for the barman to make his way back in your direction, despite seeming to be categorically avoiding you, you think about what brought you here. You rarely drink in pubs these days, choosing to keep to your own company, one that doesn’t judge, well not after a few drinks anyway. It isn’t the van, the only breakdown being the breakdown in communications between you (both) and you expect to resolve the dispute within the week, probably with a slurred declaration of love on the way home tonight. Business, while not booming, has been doing alright, as shown by your presence at a pub. A preference for your own company isn’t the only reason you drink at home, after all. It isn’t MJN either. Carolyn has been remarkably reasonable so far this month; well she’d have to be remarkably reasonable because nobody wants a small charter firm in September, apparently. Douglas also has been wonderful, as always. But there is still something in the way he looks at you sometimes, something you’re not quite sure about and makes you shrink into whatever clothes you’re wearing.

You’re here because you need to be, though. Because you needed a drink and felt like a bit of company while the colour slowly drained from the world around you. It’s not a word you tend to use, need. You have never said to yourself ‘I need a drink’, not even jokingly or after a truly bad day. It was always ‘I would like a drink’ or ‘a drink would be very handy right now’. It was never a need. Except for when it is.

After last orders are called and after the doors are shut and locked behind you, you have to stop at a lamppost to remember where exactly you live. An indistinct figure approaches you from behind. You don’t see him until he’s right next to you, talking quietly into your ear.

 

You don’t know how you got home. Everything after that is a blank. A section of black canvas with ‘scene missing’ printed on it, stretching on until this moment. Waking up on the floor of your flat with your black jacket laid gently over the arm of the sofa. You curl up into a tight ball in the corner furthest from the door and cry unashamedly into your Captain’s hat. Your uniform jacket is pulled tightly around you, gripped in shaking hands like a security blanket and there are two purple bruises flowering on your wrists.

***

Weeks pass in a blur of activity with occasional spaces where evenings should be. You haven’t been to the pub since that night, nor do you plan to go again. You’ve been finding it more and more a priority to hide your habits from Douglas. It’s because it would be insensitive to drink so much when he can’t, or at least that’s what you tell yourself.

The only moments of calm you find are on overnight stays in various hotels that are more of a home for cockroaches than humans. But the quiet moments where everything around you slows and you’re in Douglas’ arms talking about flying or life, the universe and everything, you find that you wouldn’t trade them for the world. Or all the vodka the world can offer you.

But there are times in these oases where things start to encroach on the peace. When your hands start shaking and you have to tightly clench your fists to stop them. Some days you snap at people without meaning to. You’ve seen a perplexed hurt on Arthur’s face too many times lately and even Douglas has stopped snapping back with the aloof carelessness he used to have. Carolyn still shouts back but you don’t snap at Carolyn much. Even on the days when you’re inexplicably angry at everything your brain knows not to snap at Carolyn, it’s probably a primal defence mechanism. Your appetite packed its bags and left you a while ago which does make dinners with Douglas a bit awkward. Your stomach still sees food and urges your hands forward but your brain just repeats the question ‘why’ like a petulant child.

You’ve noticed that your uniform jacket doesn’t fit as it used to. Now it hangs limp on your bony shoulders, baggy around your decreasing middle, making you look even smaller. Your face has taken on a pallor as well, wearing white makes you look translucent, like a ghost of a ghost. There are black circles deepening under your eyes. They were always there with the lack of sleep you usually got, but they are much darker now, like permanent bruises. Your hands are still shaking.

All this you notice as you stare at yourself in the mirror. You pick and poke at your skin, hoping that something you do will improve matters. You’re not sure you ever really liked what you saw but putting on your uniform made you proud. It made you look like the person you always wanted to be. Now you look at yourself with the fabric falling off your frame and you’re miles away from the image you’ve had in your head since you were six.

You look at your reflection in the mirror and feel the crush of disappointment that further collapses your shoulders. Then you try to distract yourself by calculating how long it’s been since your last drink. The technical answer is about five minutes ago, when you ran into the flat and reached for the bottle of vodka you keep by the door because making your way to the cupboard without falling over after you’ve been away for a while and had little chance to get to any quantity of alcohol, just became impossible. Besides it was easier to get a fix as soon as you get through the door to keep the wolves that seem to follow you at bay. You absently reach for the bottle lying next to you and take a long swallow, still staring at yourself in the mirror.

It’s going to be a long night.

You probably won’t remember it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for alcoholism.

At 6:30 the next morning the harsh alarm tears through your eardrums like a serrated knife. It shakes your head to within an inch of its existence and taunts you as you stumble around trying to locate your phone to silence the incessant beeping. It seems to be hiding, loudly taunting you but never quite revealing its location, until a chance collision with the sofa reveals its hiding spot as it falls onto your already throbbing skull. At least you found it.

Your head hurts more than you can possibly describe. It is the one thing you still haven’t gotten used to. You aren’t one of the lucky people who don’t get hangovers and seem to bounce out of the house in the mornings with the light and energy of spring. No, you always wake up in the depths of winter with a cyclone working its way through your head. Every photon of light pains you, every mouse’s squeak rips through your ears, every movement rattles your bones and disorientates, though you aren’t quite sure that’s not because you’re still a little bit drunk. You have the grace and coordination of a stampeding herd as you stagger through to your bedroom on the hunt for your uniform, forgoing the shower as impossibly painful and wishing you hadn’t broken the sunglasses.

When the doorbell tears through the silence you are basking in, you flinch and drag yourself to the door, glancing in the mirror to see the smile you put on looking too forced, more of a grimace in a thin disguise. There’s too little time to fix it though, as you fiddle with the door handle. At least you don’t look too bad.

“Bloody hell, Martin!”

Or so you thought.

“Not a word.” You aim for dangerous and fall short even of pitiful to somewhere in the region of weak and fragile.

“Rough night?”

“Douglas.”

“Are you alright, Martin?”

You look up, startled. He’s sincere. Genuinely asking, genuinely concerned. It’s too early in the morning to deal with sincerity from Douglas.

“Yeah, I just...I’m fine. Can we go now, please.”

You’re pleading with him, you never do that. He lets it go and leads to the waiting taxi. The driver gives you a surprised look which turns to pity. You sink into the seat with a groan. Douglas places a hand gently on your forehead, drawing a squeal of protest out of you which ceases when he starts rubbing slow circles with his fingers that are inexplicably soothing.

Before long you have your head pillowed on Douglas’ shoulder and you’re drifting slowly into a much calmer sleep than you had last night. You feel a light kiss placed on your hair and a sigh breathed in the same place. Luckily you’re asleep long before you can register what either means.

***

Accusation is in the eye of everyone you see. Your sister looks at you and knows. Your mother’s eyes become pained and she knows. Your friends go out with you to the pub and when you look at your watch, see it’s gone two am and still say ‘another couple of rounds’, they know. Your dad’s dead but you’re sure he knows too. They all know.

Except they don’t.

“I want you to stay around my place when we get back, Martin.”

He’d said that halfway into the return flight in a voice that left no room for negotiation at all. A voice that made it clear it was a command and made you feel like a misbehaving child.

He goes with you to get some things from your flat, not that there’s much for you to get, and he’s in the door before you can stop him, stepping past you to survey dankness you call, well, the flat. It never was home. He finally gets a chance to look around properly. You haven’t let him this close before. He looks, takes in the sofa with the blanket draped over it and cushions pushed to one end. He sees the empty bottle of pinot noir, a bottle of non-descript wine, also empty and the half empty bottle of vodka strewn in various resting places around the room, so there is always something close at hand. Not particularly subtle.

His face is perfectly placid when you return with a small bag and you smile uncomfortably. He doesn’t react, just steps aside to let you through the door muttering something like ‘ladies first’. Even the drive back to his much bigger, much nicer flat is filled with a cloying atmosphere you want to open the door and leap out to escape from.   
In his flat, after a dinner you struggle to eat and a short session wrapped in each other on the sofa in front of the telly where very little was said but the silence is friendlier, you make your way to the bedroom and, after the usual preparations like changing and teeth brushing, you lie together enjoying the warmth of your bodies pressed close. You look up at him, he down at you and suddenly your lips are meeting and then parting to allow your tongues to battle and conquer. Then your hands wander across each other, familiar territory but somehow still different every time. Then he pushes you on your back and looms over you, still stealing your breath away with every kiss and then it’s hot and it’s wonderful and oh God.

 

Afterwards you contemplate what you have with this man. The wonderful sky god Douglas Richardson. How much you can rely on him without him even knowing it, especially when you are no longer capable of coherent thought let alone the ability to say no. He was always there to protect you when you needed it. Too many times really. Except for the times when he wasn’t, but you don’t think about them, or talk about them, or do anything with them. You just let them haunt you as you sleep, because it’s easier and what’s one more haunting? You wonder if he knows about your ghosts.   
He does.

You fall asleep with him next to you. A concrete presence but you’re still scared because he could be gone any day now, deciding that you’re too much hassle and he wants someone who doesn’t have to crawl into a bottle to feel better.

 

In your dreams you’re on trial. Always accused of something. Everyone is faceless but you feel eyes burning into you, searing your soul. He’s in the witness stand, the only face that’s clear and even that is just a cruel gesture, allowing you to read the hurt, see the tears so you can read the hurt, see the tears. So you can watch his mouth move and feel nothing where you were once hypnotised. So you can stare into his eyes and feel nothing where you once wanted to drown in them. So you can smell him and feel nothing where once you were intoxicated just by him. You break down and beg, one more chance, never again, you promise, this time it’ll be different, not like the last time or the time before, or the time before that. You stutter to a halt as you realise what you’re saying. You look at him for guidance as you always used to. He nods wisely, point made. You feel so small, so lost. Like a child.

That’s when you wake with a start and feel him pulling you close so you can cry into his chest instead of the callous bed sheets. He knows this is when you’re at your most reasonable. He knows this is when to talk to you, when you’ll listen because you can do nothing else. When you would agree to almost anything to get him to stay and hold you forever. He knows this from experience, because he knows that this is when he was most repentant and ashamed. The most receptive to change.

“Martin,” he begins, low and soothing, and your world falls apart.

***

The clock on the bedside table announces every passing minute.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Echoing in the agonizing quiet.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Making you shrink further into his arms and try and shield your ears.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

You try and drown it out internally, thinking about all the things you can say, all the assurances you can make that will stop the questions and demands and delay the inevitable ‘I’m leaving you’.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Then there’s a vibration of another kind. One that runs its way along the body you’re clinging to and along your spine. You lift your head a fraction, the clock flooding your ears as you do.

“Pardon?” you ask in a weak whisper.

“I said are you awake,” he repeats with a smile that isn’t reflected in his eyes. “But that rather answered my question.

“Oh,” you say, for want of anything better.

“We need to talk, Martin,” he states, face grave, tone severe.

“I know,” you concede, looking away in shame.

“It’s been going on too long really.”

“Yes.”

He sighs.

“You know where it will get you, Martin. You know that it’s dangerous, don’t you? You’re not an idiot despite the evidence.”

You manage to scowl in annoyance despite the heart beat thudding in your ears and the butterflies in your stomach, but you still nod in reply because you do know, you’ve experienced most of what the drunken fog can do to cloud your mind and shred your judgement. You know, too, that you won’t talk about it, can’t talk about it. Even acknowledging it a little with a simple word like need has proved destructive in the past.

“You have to,” Douglas says, proving his much protested against mind reading abilities. “The drink...it’s only ever temporary, Martin. I don’t need to tell you that. In the long term...well I can’t watch that happen.”

“I...I don’t...I can control it.”

“Martin,” he sighs but you continue. You’re getting bolder, finding a reservoir of courage you didn’t know was there. If you can convince him that it isn’t really a problem, you might just be able to get through this with both the vodka and your first officer still in your life. You’re not sure you could handle life without either one of them, and being forced to choose is too much.

“I can, just a couple of drinks a few nights a week. It isn’t a problem Douglas, not like...”

“Not like it was with me?”

“I wasn’t going to...”

“You are forgetting that you’re lying to the voice of experience, or trying to lie I should say.”

“I...”

“Shush, Martin, just for a minute. I’ve been watching you, for months. It’s been getting steadily worse. You can’t see it because you won’t let yourself, half of the times you probably don’t even remember. Have you been having blackouts?” you remain perfectly still, like a possum playing dead in self defence. “Yes I thought so.”

“It’s not like...it’s not like I can’t function. I can do my job.”

“Only just, Martin. The aviator shades may make you look the part but they can’t give you magical piloting powers.”

“But...it works, me being like this, it’s like a balance.”

“On a knife edge. There’s no stability, you see, there are so many things that can tip you over the edge, you’ve already been there, haven’t you? How much can you remember Martin?”

Images of dark alleys and shadowed pubs flash into your mind and you feel the nausea rise. “I don’t know,” you choke out.

“It’s alright, I’m here, stay with me.” His hand starts rubbing against your arm, anchoring you into the present.

“It’s not alright,” you sob, pushing away from him. “What do you know? You don’t know anything about me, about my life.”

“Martin. I...”

“No! I...I can’t...I...I...I need some air.”

You leap out of the bed, snatch up the first set of clothes you find to hurriedly put on and scramble out of the flat with the words Douglas calls to you falling on deaf ears.

***


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for alcoholism.

You spend hours wandering around the unfamiliar streets trying to get lost. Your feet carry you forward while your mind is occupied elsewhere. You cry a fair bit, too, then you get angry, then ashamed, then scared. All this time you were worrying about him leaving you and you just left him.  
You can’t focus properly on anything. Your body is shaking, but you ascribe that to the cold night air, despite the fact that you’re sweating. You can feel it on your palms as you wring your hands anxiously. The slick, clammy skin slides as your fingers move without coordination. How your legs keep you going you aren’t sure, but you salute them.

When the sun begins to rise, you stop and watch it. The dawn of a new day. One of the few you’ve seen without hurriedly shutting it out because the light irritates your fearsome hangover. It’s beautiful and it makes you cry again for reasons you can’t quite fathom. You look to your wrist but the gleam of the genuine Patek Phillipe is missing. God knows what time it is. Normally you would panic and head home at full speed, but today is a day off, there’s no flight to prepare for, no clients for the van, just time you were meant to spend with Douglas. It feels tainted now you know it was a ruse. But Douglas is Douglas, he always knows what he’s doing and he always does what’s right. He always sorts things out; even Carolyn has begun to take that for granted. Maybe it’s for the best, then. Maybe it is time.

Besides you can’t stay out here forever as, now you look at yourself, you’re wearing a pink Hawaiian shirt.

***

He’s not home. You just get back and it turns out that when you try things like getting lost, it seems to work. The door’s not locked so he can’t have gone far, unless he thought you’d come back in his absence. It would be just like him, always thinks of everything.

You sit gingerly on the sofa, perched on the edge like someone who’s afraid of breaking something. Unconsciously you start to hug yourself against the cold you feel, but the heating’s on, you saw the thermostat as you came in. And suddenly you remember that you’ve still got that shirt on. The thought draws a smile from you, a small, delicate one but it’s still there, and you make your way back to the bedroom.

When you’re pulling a t-shirt over your head you hear him. A deep voice booming down the corridor in your direction. He sounds...well he doesn’t sound like Douglas. He’s worried, almost frantic and whoever he’s talking to is obviously trying to calm him down and failing. Your t-shirt falls the last few inches as you stare at the door. There are only a few phrases you can hear. ‘I don’t know where...’ ‘I’ve been looking for...’ ‘It’s not my place to...’ ‘No we didn’t have a bloody lover’s tiff!’

You wince at the last one. Then, gathering up what remains from your courage reservoir, you open the door.

He freezes suddenly, then spins at high speed. His face is a mask of shock when he sees you and time stands still for a moment while you silently beg him to say something. He does, but not to you.

“He’s here,” he says into his mobile. “It’s alright, panic over. Thank you.” Then he pauses to listen and rolls his eyes. “No I haven’t forgotten the Prague trip on Saturday. Bye.”

Then he’s back to staring at you having placed his phone down on the table next to him, the slight scrape seemingly deafening in the silence.

“Carolyn?” you guess, more for the sake of saying something than any inclination to know. He nods. You nod back.

“Do you...do you want a cup of tea?” he asks in a strained voice. You nod again, but somewhere in the back of your mind there is an itch that tells you that you want something stronger. He indicates to the sofa then leaves to seek refuge in the kitchen. You’re back to your delicate position on the edge of the cushion, feeling no less awkward but at least better dressed.

Douglas returns with two cups of tea and you cradle yours in your hands like an injured bird, taking cautious sips. Douglas swallows his down like there’s no tomorrow. The silence reigns.

“You changed then,” he notes looking you up and down from the corner of his eye.

“Yes,” you mutter in response, a little bit of annoyance creeping through the apprehension. “Why did you let me leave in that shirt?”

“Well I thought it would be quite funny,” he replies sardonically. Then suddenly he’s serious. “I couldn’t have stopped you, anyway.”

“No, I...I suppose not.”

More silence. More tea. The gap between you on the sofa seems like a crater. You give it a sideways look and see Douglas’ fingers twitch slightly, like they want to reach for yours.

“Where were you?” Douglas asks, dispelling your thoughts. “I looked for you for hours, but you were nowhere to be seen.”

“I was just walking. I don’t really know where.”

“You could have gotten lost.”

He makes you feel like a teenager, incapable of looking after yourself, of knowing your own mind. There’s a spike of irritation somewhere in a corner of your brain and you try to subdue it.

“I did, actually. It took me a good couple of hours to find my way back.” Calm with a hint of levity. Forced calm, of course, but you really are trying.

“I see.”

You both pause to drink tea.

“Why did you call Carolyn?” you ask, annoyance clawing a voice for itself. He had no right.

“I...I don’t know. I thought at first that you might have gone to her, momentary lapse in judgement. Then I suppose I just wanted to hear a friendly voice.”

“Friendly?” You can’t be annoyed with him when he says something like that, can you?

“Come now, she didn’t tell me to go hang until after she’d said good morning. Followed by ‘yes, morning and do you know what time of the bloody morning it is?’”

You smile into your mug. Another glance to the side tells you that he’s smiling too.

He starts to say something but swallows more tea instead. Uncertainty is so unlike him, it’s faintly frightening.

“What did you tell her?” It sounds snappier than you mean it, really it does.

“Martin,” he groans back. Him, he’s the one who is exasperated, what right has he to be frustrated, it’s not his life on the line is it, his livelihood, his friends. If only you could listen to yourself.

“What? Don’t I have a right to know? Isn’t it fair that I should know if you told her about...well you know?”

“Yes, but Martin...”

“What?” you interrupt with a shout. “But what, Douglas? There is no but here. You told her didn’t you, had a wonderful gossip about the numerous problems of a certain Captain, yes I am still the bloody Captain, Douglas, no matter how much you want the extra stripe.”

He doesn't react, keeps his face still and serene and his eyes empty. It just makes you more incensed.

“God you did didn’t you?” you accuse in disgust. “You actually told her, I didn’t think you’d sink so low. Did she offer you the stripe? Did she say you could be captain when I’m gone? Are you so easily brought? How could you?”

“Martin, listen to me.”

“No. I don’t want to hear it, I trusted you.”

You stand up violently, too violently for your weakened legs to handle, but you keep them upright by sheer force of anger. You give him a glare of pure venom before storming to the bedroom, only realising halfway there that you still have the mug in your hands. Next to the door, you spot some flowers on a table. Flowers you brought him on his birthday, just to see the look on his face. You look back to the sofa, see that he hasn’t moved an inch and bang the mug down next to the vase. A petal falls gracefully into the mug as you enter the bedroom and slam the door behind you.

 

It can’t be much later when you hear a hesitant knock at the door. Can’t really be the hours it feels like it’s been, the days even. You dimly register it; jot it down in a ledger with a note to examine it later when your brain is less busy.

After you slammed the door like a petulant teenager, minus the shout of ‘it’s not fair’, the anger seemed to jump ship, job done. It was then that you collapsed under a wave of abrupt and devastating despair. It shoved you roughly to the floor, stole the breath from your lungs and drenched your face with tears. What it didn’t do was force your vocal chords into reaction. It didn’t make you moan like a Dickensian ghost or howl like a wolf, no, you were silent, pressing your face to the soft, delicate carpet and feeling all those words you shouted tread you further into the floor. You don’t regret them per se, more regret that you shouted them at him; usually you’re so reasonable.

As the time wears on, you get worse. It doesn’t matter what time of the afternoon it is, you suddenly need to sleep, exhaustion entering itself into every pore of your body. But from the moment you lay yourself down on the bed, enveloped in the thick duvet, you become aware that sleep will not come.

At first it is simply that you are too hot. Fair enough, these things happen, easily fixed by casting aside the duvet, which you do. If anything the temperature just increases. So you peel away your t-shirt from your sweat slickened body, fingers fumbling on the unexpectedly fiddly edges as they shake and refuse to grip. After what is really far too many minutes for simply removing a t-shirt, it lies in a sodden heap on the floor, shunned, but still you can’t cool down. The trousers are discarded next, thrown with scorn into a tangled pile on top of the t-shirt, leaving you fidgeting on the bed in just a pair of thin boxers. Still it isn’t working.

The next main issue is comfort. You love this bed. It is goldilocks’ dream, not too soft, not too hard and it is still big enough to contain both you and Douglas, and bouncy enough for...well, not entirely innocent reasons. It is a wonderful bed that you can sink into and it will hold you close until you happily drift into your dreams. So why it chose then to poke at your back with springs and dip and curve in places it never had before, you don’t know. You suspected that it is on Douglas’ side. Everything is on Douglas’ side. Either way, it won’t let you rest in one position for more than a few seconds, it won’t hold you close and it won’t let you sleep.

Your brain is another issue, perhaps the most pressing and hindering issue. It won’t let you rest either, constantly bombarding your consciousness with shouted words, muttered curses, sentiments screamed out in the middle of the night when no one is there to hear them. It hurls insults at you, calls you pathetic, tells you that if you can’t handle this you don’t deserve to be a pilot. It draws your attention to how hot you are, to how dry your throat is, how good a chilled glass of wine will be, how soothing to your aching throat, how it will slip down, slowly, smoothly, like silk, seeping its lower temperature into every inflamed cell in your oesophagus, calming it. Or a glass of spirit, any you aren’t really fussy, with ice. How the liquid will take on the frost of the solidified water as it melts achingly slowly, and that coldness will be given to you by the alcohol as a gift as it is swallowed down. How good it will be, how everything will be alright after that, and you will be allowed to rest, to sleep. Just one. That is it, they aren’t cruel, just one and it will all go away.

And that brings you to the knock at the door. You are primed and ready to leap away, burst through the door and run to the nearest pub, off licence, anything, anywhere, it doesn’t matter as long as it has alcohol. Then that tiny, timid, childlike knock at the door makes you pause. You try to say ‘come in’ but your throat is too dry and all that comes out is a rough croak that almost makes you look around, searching for the frog in the room. The message seems to have gotten through though, as the door opens and Douglas appears behind it.

“You alright?” he asks in a whisper, and that’s all you need.

Your mind focuses its attention on Douglas like a homing beacon. It’s analysing, cataloguing every detail of his stance, his facial expression, his guarded eyes, everything, to detect sincerity, disdain, disgust, whatever he shows, willingly or not, though of course you are handicapped by never having taken the course on understanding people in Ipswich.

“Martin?”

He steps further into the room, opening the door a bit more and pushing the carpet fibres up in a sweeping arc that seems to be a different colour to the rest of the carpet. You look back to him, see the deepening of the lines in his forehead, see his frown. Your mind throws up possible reasons for it, none of them good, all of them making you shudder and curl back against the wall. The bedsprings still prod at every available inch of you and the frustration vocalises in a low groan.

“It’s okay,” you vaguely hear along with the smooth swish the door makes as it pushes the carpet fibres back down on its way back to the door frame. It makes you shiver, wracking your body with more shaking than it can handle. You moan again and suddenly there’s a warm hand on your forearm and it’s just too much, too much heat. You yelp and pull the arm away, feeling the burning and then a sensation like insects are crawling under your skin.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sounding slightly startled. You nod in acknowledgment, but one eye is on the door, gauging the distance, calculating the amount of energy you can empty into your limbs and thinking about the relief of a nice cool glass of...

“Warm for the time of year, don’t you think?”

Hang on, what did he just say? Your mind suspiciously diverts some of its attention to Douglas, keeping most of its power on calculating the logistics of your escape.

“Usually we need the heating on full blast by now.”

He is, he is actually talking about the weather. Well, yes he’s British but this is ridiculous.

“Or an extra blanket,” he continues, analysing you as you are analysing him, except more efficiently. “You don’t even need clothes it seems.”

“Too hot,” you force out, through a dry throat and clenched teeth.

“Yes, it is. For the time of year.”

There’s a conversation here. Usually there is, things you’re meant to say back, meant to laugh about, but you can’t remember them. He stares at you with an intensity that demands an answer but wearing an expression that says it’s okay if you don't have one. You’re confused, perplexed, bewildered, what is it you’re meant to do now? Douglas would know, you could always ask....oh. So what do you do now?

The warm hand is back on your forearm. You flinch but don’t pull away completely. It snakes up your arm, over your shoulder, past your back and rests peacefully on your other shoulder. It doesn't pull, it isn’t insistent, it doesn't even move but you relax closer to Douglas anyway, as if you’re magnetised. You rest your head on his shoulder, juddering body held closer to his, all your nervous energy bubbling up to the surface, fighting to break free from your skin and causing even more insects to wriggle underneath the layers. You’re pretty sure the sweat from your forehead is enough to soak through his shirt let alone the rest of you, but he doesn't seem to care so it becomes just something else you file away.

The silence that has suffocated you for what must have been hours returns. But it has less power now Douglas is here, holding you. Your mind finally starts to settle, still keeping a section of itself devoted to the escape plan, and you can feel fatigue seeping into all your limbs, pulling you away from the real world until...

“Sometimes it takes something big, a loss, an event, to make you realise. Sometimes it’s gradual, a dawning realisation over weeks that you have to change.”

It’s whispered into your hair almost sensuously. As it sends an icy shiver down your spine, he holds you tight. Comforting you and at the same time telling you that you aren’t going to escape this time, your mind scoffs and continues the plans.

“What was it for you?” you whisper back, just about. You know it’s rude to pry but a part of you hell bent on self preservation, and avoiding another row, fixes on any small hope of steering the conversation away from you.

“My wife left me, and took our daughter with her.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry,” you say sadly. But you can’t resist. “The one with the carp?”

“The ex-carp yes. She’d been trying to get me help for a long time but I am nothing if not stubborn.”

“Yes, I know.”

“There is a right time and a wrong time to agree with your partner’s ex, Martin.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” you chuckle; surprised at the ease with which the small sound emerges from you, bringing only a little twinge from your throat as it slowly rehydrates. “What happened after that?”

“I ended up in hospital,” he says bluntly. “Hit the bottle harder than I’d meant to. After that I decided enough was enough.”

“I...”

“Are you still going to deny it’s a problem?”

“It...”

“You’re shaking, a lot, your hands in particular. You’re sweating, too, your heart is racing by the feel of, all because you haven’t had a chance to have a drink for a while, yes? You’ve lost a lot of weight and you didn’t have much meat on your bones to begin with. You don’t have an appetite anymore, do you? Just for the drink and that’s all you can think about, even now. You can’t sleep, probably haven’t slept properly in ages and there are missing sections in your memory, aren’t there? Martin, do I need to continue?”

You shake your head. You’re already crying. He presses his forehead closer to you.

“Shh, I’m here,” he murmurs.

That’s a comforting thought, it really is. You press a little closer, rearranging your legs to fold over his.

“It won’t be easy,” Douglas says. “It will be painful. But I’ll be here, I promise.”

“I...” you’re shaking; tears are flooding down your face and still the thought a glass of vodka and ice is there. “Oh God I can’t.”

“Yes you can.”

“I need it.”

“No you don’t.”

“I need you.”

“Martin.”

“Please don’t make me choose.”

“I’m not. Martin, look at me.”

You lift your head to view him through a milky film of tears. You can’t tell what expression he has.

“I. Will never. Leave you. Okay? I’m not making you choose, I’m telling you that it will destroy you if you don’t give up now. You’re scared of what it will be like without the alcohol, aren’t you? I was too. But you’ll get through it.”

“You’ll help me?”

“Of course.”

“Oh God. I don’t know if I...” you take a deep breath with a juddering exhale. “Okay. You’re right, you’re always bloody right. If you’ll help me maybe I can stop.”

“Well done, Martin.”

You scoff and eye the door.

“Don’t even think about it,” he warns.

 

***

When the evening comes and the sun sets, Douglas finally pulls you off his shirt with a chuckle.

“You’re paying for the dry cleaning on this, Martin,” he jokes. You manage a weak grimace in return.

He gets up slowly, stretching and coaxing life back into his joints. You look up at him with a kind of confused anguish.

“W...where are you going?”

“Just to the kitchen,” he replies calmly, looking directly into your eyes. “I’m going to put some dinner on, okay?”

Your distress deepens, there’s no appetite present at all, the thought of food is best pressed to the back of your mind and left there.

“You don’t have to eat anything if you don’t want to. I wouldn’t really expect you to manage much for a few days.”

You nod, relieved, something less to worry about. You’ve gone without food before, you’ll be fine. He walks away while you’re still thinking to yourself and by the time you muster the energy to move to the sofa, the cooking is well underway. You begin to catch the tell tale scents on the air as you delicately fold yourself onto the sofa. Pasta, you think, something with pasta. Your stomach cramps painfully, causing you to gasp. The smells of cooking food surround you, smother you. You feel nausea rising, your stomach rejecting the idea. You try to soothe it, telling it that Douglas says it’s okay, you don’t have to eat, but your stomach doesn't care.

All too soon you’re running for the bathroom, using the energy stored for your escape, and then you’re bent double over the toilet, expelling the watery contents of your stomach. Your brain is shouting ‘I told you so’, proclaiming that you were a fool to think it would be alright, that if you had Douglas, you wouldn’t need to drink. Well look where that’s got you.

You throw up again, your throat is burned raw now, beyond anything you’ve felt before. There are some footsteps behind you. You slam the door closed with your foot, it’s all his fault anyway.

“Martin,” he tries.

“Go away,” you croak lifelessly before hunching over again.

“I’ll get you some water.”

“I don’t want water.”

“Martin...”

“It’s your fault. If you really wanted to help you’d get me a drink.”

 

“I will, Martin.”

“I mean a proper drink,” you reply bitterly.

“Ah.” You sit down on the floor next to the closed door. “You know I won’t do that.”

“You don’t care,” you spit. “You don’t want to help me.”

“I’ll help you in any way I can, Martin. That would not help you.”

“That’s just your opinion.”

He sighs, leaning his head back against the wall.

“They think it’s going to rain later on this week,” he says, preparing himself for a long night. Luckily he doesn't mind eating pasta cold.

***


	4. Chapter 4

Too hot. No, too cold. No, too... oh you don’t know.

Sometimes the small bathroom feels like a sauna and you watch the beads of sweat form on your burning skin and crawl down your arm like beetles before falling and dying on the tiled floor. You hair clings to your scalp, neck and forehead like it fears it will fall if it doesn't. Your thin fingers tap a discordant tune on the side of the bath, entirely of their own accord. You have the cold tap running for most of the night and growl when Douglas jokes about his water bill.

Sometimes the small bathroom feels like a cold store and you watch the hairs on your arms rise to trap air between them. The sweat in your hair feels like it will turn into frost at any minute and dust your damp curls with snow. Your whole body shakes even as you fold into a corner, huddling under a soft towel.

Some of your time, quite a bit really, especially as the night wears on into the early hours of the morning, is spent   
pouring your guts into the toilet. Not one of your favourite pastimes, but one you’ve been getting much more familiar with since your drinking got heavier. In between trips to the taps in the bath and the sink, you slink back to the small patch of tiles in front of the toilet, laying your legs flat in front of you in a vain effort to reduce pressure on your stomach, to try and halt the inevitable.

By the time pink and red shines through the window, there is absolutely nothing left to expel, there can’t be, there wasn’t much in there in the first place. Your body seems to be begrudgingly accepting this, but it won’t leave you be, forcing your stomach to convulse anyway and making you lean forward again, causing pain to your already suffering muscles but leaving nothing to show for it.

You then realise why you hate white in bathrooms, well at the moment you have suddenly developed an aversion to white in general, a horrible colour that reflects light too easily. It spreads the garish, offensive brightness, much akin to Arthur first thing in the morning and just as unwelcome, around the room and makes sure that there is nowhere to possibly hide from it. Especially when you bring glossed tiles into the mix. But there is nothing you can do about it, who puts curtains in bathrooms, after all? But it is amazing how inventive the mind can be, even a distracted and pained mind as yours is now. You reluctantly tear the towel from your shoulders and hang it with difficulty over the window. You slump back down with a wince to bask in what you feel must be one of the greatest pieces of initiative you’ve had in a long time, but all it seems to do is cast an eerie green glow around the room that gets more disquieting as the sun gets brighter. And with the loss of the towel, you find yourself shivering again, damp with cooling water and sweat, and you don’t trust your bright ideas anymore.

There is a constant stream of nonsensical noise drifting through the door. Douglas has been talking to you all night. When the subject of the weather is exhausted he moves on to complaining about taxes, the government, traffic, people, queuing. Let it never be said that he doesn't conform to international stereotypes when he wants to. It should have been annoying after a while. If you were in your right mind perhaps it would be but as it was, his speeches flitted over the boundary between endearing and irritating sometimes within the same second. It is becoming harder and harder to keep up with it.

After more time, more hours, more shaking, you start to cry. It pounces on you like a lion, ambushing you into floods before you can even figure out what you’re crying about. It doesn't take long for your memory to catch up with the tears and provide details of failures past and present for you to lament. You cry harder, sobbing more vocally than you want to when there’s still the low hum of Douglas’ voice outside the door, but it doesn't seem to interrupt it.

When, later, your stomach realises it truly is out of options, it cramps. Painfully and often, making you curl into a ball on the floor and let out a moan of pent up shame, frustration and despair. The inane chatter from behind the solid, white door ceases, leaving you feeling a little bit isolated, like this small room, decked in gleaming tiles with a sickly green tint, is what the world boils down to, all it will give you; you the forsaken, the abandoned, the swept-under-the-rug unwanted secret of society. And suddenly all you want to do is talk to Douglas about the weather, or the queue at the post office, because at least that will mean that there is something else out there, something you’re part of, that you can relate to as a person.

You pass the morning in the foetal position on the floor of an artificially green bathroom, muscles and internal organs aching, tears streaming from your eyes and drenching every inch of skin that isn’t already sodden, praying for the small sounds from behind the door to come back.

 _Please come back_.

***

As the time moves on, so do you, so does your mood. Where you felt enclosed and incarcerated, you now feel vulnerable and exposed. Douglas’ voice returned not long ago and left too, just a quick check up. You’re still lying on the floor, curled up on your sides, staring at the door like you’re expecting someone to burst in any minute. The green colouring makes you think of old horror films and even though the light has dimmed as the sun moves across the sky, the dullness just makes the room look even more sinister.

Douglas is back. You watch the shadows you can see under the door, only distantly hearing what he’s saying. Many things, many questions: are you okay? Do you need anything? Do you want some company? How are you feeling? Are you okay? Fussing over you like a mother hen. Ridiculous

“Go ‘way,” you mumble feebly.

“Martin. Are you...?”

“I said go away,” you say, louder.

“Alright, alright,” he concedes and retreats. You watch the shadows give way to yellow lights and close your eyes against it. Bloody light, who needs it anyway?

***

“Martin,” you hear, not long after. “Are you alright?”

You wonder if he’s checking on you at regular intervals. Perhaps you should be able to tell but your sense of time has vanished, maybe you can use Douglas to replace it. You think about his question. Are you okay? Everything in your body hurts. Every fibre, every blood vessel, every insignificant part of you has some gripe about its lot in life. Your stomach and your brain seem to be the ringleaders of the revolution, one cramping and continuing to try and reject everything you introduce to it, including water as you found to your cost not long ago, the other not only makes your skull throb with the most painful migraine you’ve ever had, it also starts thinking, and thinking in a state like this is much too dangerous, especially when the main thing you’re thinking about is cold and alcoholic. But apart from all that...

“Can’t complain,” you mutter through clenched teeth. It pulls a huff of laughter from the door.

“I can come in if you like.”

“No,” you say too fast, jolting your head. “No, I’m fine.”

“We don’t have to talk, I could just keep you company for a while.”

“No,” you insist.

“Are you sure you...”

“I’m fine, just go.”

You hear a faint thud, like someone resting something against the wooden door, then a quiet sigh.

“Alright. I’m here if you need me.”

***

The more you think about it, the less you want Douglas to see you. You always did wonder what he saw in you. It is true to say that your physical appearance was never really a hindrance in prospective relationships, more your inability to speak to anyone at all without getting tongue tied and saying something you really shouldn’t have, usually resulting in a fit of giggles and, in the worst case, a kicking. You ignore getting detained in Boston. Douglas has known you for years now, he knows that when being romantic, it’s best not to expect anything to come in the form of words, but he also knows you make up for it in a variety of other ways. Perhaps there is a small sense of vanity that makes you want to keep how you look now from him, you don’t even really know how bad you look, you can just tell it isn’t going to be good. Perhaps it is vanity, perhaps it’s shame, perhaps it’s fear that he’ll be repulsed by what he sees and send you away. Either way, you muster what’s left of your brain power for another bright idea, hoping this one will be more successful than the last, at least the light is truly gone now and there are no green shadows in the room.

When he comes back to check on you again, you’re ready. You’ve taken a great deal of time to move yourself closer to the door, inch by agonising inch, until you are leaning against it, pressing a flushed cheek to the wood, unsure whether its cooler or not. You begin to coax life into your right arm, ever so slowly flexing the muscles, animating them bit by bit. Gradually your arm begins to rise, stroking up the wood of the door, using it as support, until your fingers brush the key waiting under the handle.

“Martin?”

Damn, it’s too soon, you’re not sure if you can make your fingers move right now. But you persevere, remaining silent while you focus intently on wriggling them back to life. They settle over the oval end of the key, pressed to the bottom of one flat side. With a great deal of effort, you force them to push on the metal with increasing pressure until it starts to move with a squeak.

“Martin?”

Come on, keep going, the metal has nearly turned 60 degrees, then 90. You press more, wincing at the effort. Then it comes to a halt as readies itself to lock the door, if you could just turn it a bit more.

“Martin?” It’s more urgent now.

You keep pressing, harder and harder until a miracle occurs: the key jolts forward with a click. You smile tiredly and fall back to the floor of the bathroom, burying your skin in the cool tiles. Something has finally worked for you.

“Martin? Bloody hell, answer me? Are you okay?”

He tries to turn the handle and for a moment your breath catches, but it seems something finally likes you and the doorknob rattles but does nothing else.

“Martin? What...?” his voices fades off into a sigh. “Answer me at least, are you alive in there?”

“Sod off,” you grumble, words muffled by the floor.

“Fine,” he says sadly. “Fine.”

***

By the time he comes back, you’re beginning to feel lonely again and start to wonder if locking the door was such a bright idea after all. Now you really are trapped, in a small, green enclosed space. If something happens he won’t be able to get to you, not quickly anyway. Maybe you were a little hasty, but unlocking the door...it’s so much effort, so much pain for something so simple. You could leave it be for a while yet, just a little while.

“Martin?”

He’s back then. You don’t have the energy to say anything; you’re exhausted in body and spirit. Your mind seems to be racing still, going through thoughts and memories in seconds before moving on to the next unconnected images. It takes a minute to hear him above the sound of your brain, your trembling body and your thudding heart.

“Martin?”

You still can’t bring yourself to reply.

“At least let me know you’re alive, Martin.”

You kick the door half-heartedly, creating a dull knock. Douglas replies by slumping down next to the door and resting his head back on the wall.

“That doesn’t prove anything, Martin,” he says wearily. You let out a groan. “Try again.”

“What do you want?” you force out through your raw throat.

“That’s a start.” You think you can hear the smirk in his voice. “How are you feeling?”

Silence.

“Alright, silly question.”

A question has been floating around your mind for hours now, indistinct, but urgent and ever present.

“Does it get better?”

Your voice is tiny, quiet and broken. You cringe at how vulnerable you sound but you know that it does reflect part of how you feel, at least at the moment.

“Oh Martin.” It’s breathed from the other side of the door, barely there, barely audible. “Yes, it does. It does.”

You can’t stand the sympathy in the voice. The way he says it, like he would give anything in the world to trade places with you now. It breaks you, pulls tears from you when you didn’t think you had any left.

“Leave me alone,” you choke out. You listen for the sigh, the huff of air forced out by betrayal and exasperation. It doesn't come. He gets up and he leaves and you don’t hear anything else but the sound of your own sobbing.

***

The night should bring peace. A quiet hush accented by the soothing rush of minimal traffic and punctured occasionally by drunken singing, furious shouting and children crying. The temperature should be bearable, the light absent and time should creep by on tiptoe, lest it wake people who’ve ignored how little there is of it in their day, enough to fall asleep at any rate.

What night should not be is hot and sticky and loud. There shouldn’t be skittering noises and crackles and bangs that rise above the ambient sounds of human life to become cloying and frightening. The absence of light shouldn’t create shadows that shift and swirl in the corner of your eyes but stop when you turn to look at them. Time should not stride by like a giant, announcing every passing second with a loud boom. The night shouldn’t be like this.

But it is.

You tremble, you sob, you vomit, you shake, you howl, you jump at small noises, you eye every shadow with suspicion, you are afraid. Your organs and muscles hate you, and tell you so. Every few minutes you collapse to the floor, moaning in pain or crawling over to cold porcelain to cough and wretch your heart into the water.

Nothing has ever hurt this much, nothing. You’ve never needed a drink this badly, you don’t even baulk at the work ‘need’. No matter what you do, you can’t move. Whether you order, politely request or beg your limbs to work, they do whatever they want and ignore you as if you’re irrelevant.

And the noises you make. Up until now you’ve been desperate to keep quiet, to be nearly silent in your suffering. Now you want the whole world to know. You want someone to hear you scream, hear your pain and the abject despair in every wracking sob you emit. So they can help you? Maybe. So they will acknowledge that you exist is more likely, that you aren’t a non-person to be dismissed with a casual gesture when asked about. You are here, you are human and you are in pain.

Lying on the floor, knees pressed hard enough to your chest to leave bruises, hands held tight against your ears, shaking, crying, you can’t even coordinate your thoughts enough beyond one: ‘I need a drink’.

 

Douglas listens to you scream. He hears you wail and cry as he sits on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing. He gets up on twenty seven separate occasions during the night, with every intention of going to your side and breaking down the door if he has to. But every time he rises, he looks at the bedroom door, thinks about the locked door of the bathroom and sits back down. After the twenty seventh time he puts his head in his hands and lets out a moan when he hears you shout at the shadows again.

***


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning is grey, dull and lifeless. The flat is much the same. When Douglas wakes up, slumped in a heap against the headboard, he looks out of the window and feels winter advancing in a solid wall of frozen air. He wipes the fatigue from his eyes, gradually ekes movement back into his horribly bent neck and stands, accompanied by a disconcerting cracking sound from his knees. He curses whoever decided that as the years advance, the body declines.

Half-awake, his steps take him out of the bedroom on auto pilot and past the bathroom door, still shut. He stops abruptly. All the screams he heard, all the crying, it all rushes back, clamping down on his heart like a vice. He places a hand on the wood like he’s trying to feel your heartbeat through it. He takes a deep breath, drags his fingers across the gloss paint into a closed fist and knocks.

A minute ticks by with no sounds coming from behind the door. He feels his heart beat a little faster as he does the calculations in his head. How long you’ve been on withdrawal, how long you’ve been in that one room, how long you’ve been left alone. He knocks again hurriedly but still there is no reply. He tries the handle on the off chance. It turns stutteringly, squeaking at being woken so suddenly. Then there is a light click and the door slides forward. His heart skips.

The room is green, very green. He looks up at the window and spots the towel with slight confusion, then looking down, he sees you. The night really wasn’t good to you. You’re the same colour as the tiles, even with the thin rays of grey light piercing through the towel. Your skin has a sheen of sweat and evaporating water that glistens dully. You’re sat upright, which is something, hugging your knees to your chest with one hand and biting the nails off the other. You stare at a spot on the opposite wall, eyes wide and empty.

Douglas begins to cross the floor, eyes fixed on you until he feels something cold underfoot and looks down to see the key lying innocuously on the floor. He looks back to you, you haven’t moved except onto chewing a different nail.

“Martin?” he asks carefully, as if he’s trying to calm a startled horse. A crack echoes in the room. You take the finger out of your mouth, regard the broken nail, bleeding slightly, and delicately place the next finger in your mouth, still offering Douglas no acknowledgement. “Hey,” he says tenderly, kneeling down despite disapproval from his knees.

In the seconds that it takes to reach his hand out, all was calm. The stretch of time made the moment last in your blurred and unreliable memory, but in it you could see it coming. In your peripheral vision the large, warm hand approaches at a steady rate. Not hostile, but not benign either. Then when contact is made, it is like a bomb exploding in your mind.

You leap off the cold floor, legs springing to life with pent up nervous energy and they propel you with speed matched only by Gertie, across to the other side of the room, where you cower under the sink, occupying as small a space as you feasibly can. Your eyes are wide, pupils dilated and you stare at Douglas with an unhappy mix of suspicion, apprehension and pure terror. The hand that isn’t clamped between your teeth shakes wildly, even when you push it between your thighs and your abdomen. A thin trickle of blood escapes from your slightly parted lips, worms its way down your pale chin and falls at a leisurely pace onto your prominent collar bone, leaving a burgundy blemish.

Douglas gapes at you at first, hand still raised where your shoulder was. A small choke escapes him before he composes himself, closes his mouth firmly and then his eyes, with a deep sigh. He gets up. Your eyes follow every movement he makes, still wide, unblinking. He heads out the door but pauses just before he leaves. He remains motionless; all you can see is his back and one hand held limply to the door. You wait, holding your breath, for him to say something, anything, just something that will make it even a tiny bit better. He doesn't. He doesn't even sigh again, he just lets his hand fall and quits the room.

It’s like a black hole appears. Following the supernova of sensation a black hole has been born, sucking everything into it. Your memory, your concentration, your fear, your anxiety, Douglas... Douglas. He steps out of the room into the void and takes all of your emotions with him. It’s strange, feeling so empty, so...non-existent. It’s not quite a feeling of being incomplete, more of being complete but meaningless. You can’t cry, you can’t worry over imagined disasters, you can’t laugh, you can’t smile, you can’t do anything, except sit under the bathroom sink chewing absently through your finger.

When the floor outside the bathroom creaks, you are placed on high alert. Every cell focuses on the door, every sense combines to become radar. Every muscle tenses and primes itself for flight. Even your hands still.

So really when Douglas walks in with a glass of water and a loud yawn it is somewhat of an anticlimax. Your body relaxes, expelling all the energy in one long breath, forced out around the finger still clutched by your jaw. He sits down in front of you, keeping his face placid when you flinch away and presenting a glass of water as a peace offering.

You still eye it with distrust, as if you could detect poison in the way the water swirls in the glass. Douglas raises an eyebrow that inflames your sense of indignation and you reach out defiantly. It is then that your hand betrays you, beginning to quake more the further away from the protective heat of your body it goes. Douglas looks dubious as he watches your trembling fingers close around the glass and try to grip, transferring the motion to the unsuspecting tumbler, shaking the water inside. Half the content flees to the floor before Douglas manages to extract it from your reluctant hand.

His hand is on your arm before you notice it, gently rubbing up and down along your sticky skin. It’s not unpleasant, even when he strokes further upwards, running his fingers nimbly over your shoulder. They timidly moved further round until his palm sits at the back of your neck and he idly dislodges tufts of hair that sweat has pasted to your skin.

The glass advances towards your lips and you stare it down, or try to. His presses the cold edge to your mouth, tipping the water into your appreciative throat. But you aren’t ready for it, no matter how slowly he went and you splutter and cough the water out, pushing the glass away.

“Easy,” he purrs, keeping his hand firm on the back of your neck. “Little sips.”

You try again, eyes locked to the glass and let the liquid in a bit at a time, feeling it slide down your throat and spread a soothing cool around. A memory ignites, something about another drink that used to relieve you in many ways, and the water doesn't satisfy you anymore.

The glass is discarded on the floor but Douglas stays where he is, close and solid, his fingers still moving in your hair.

“How long now?”

He asks something. You can’t quite catch it, only hear a blast of white noise. Your brows furrow.

“How long now?” he repeats, pulling you just a bit closer.

At least you hear him this time, but you can’t answer. You can’t speak at the moment, but that isn’t the only reason. You don’t know. For a good few moments you aren’t even sure what he’s talking about, how long for what? But then it all returns with a wave of cruel laughter. You still can’t answer. To you it feels like it’s been a lifetime since your last drink. You shake your head, tears welling up in your eyes. Douglas wraps his long arms around you, clutching you enough to make you feel safer but not too tight that you feel crushed. You place your head on his shoulder, feel him kiss your damp hair and your eyes empty themselves.

"Are you going to tell me when it started?”

You shake your head vehemently, painting a line of sweat across his cheek and a line of tears across his shoulder.

“Alright. I suppose for now it doesn't matter.” He pauses, listening to your heart thud erratically against his ribs. He’s lost. There are so many things he could say, some sarcastic, some trite, some cruel, all meaningless. Often there are just no words that will make a situation better. This is one of those times, so he sits and he holds you in the hope that something gets through the barrier of silence and permeates to say what he can’t.

Time slinks by in the cold bathroom. Douglas holds you close, intently focused on your deceptively calm demeanour. You slump against him until the only things that keep you from oozing into a puddle on the tiles are his arms. He decides for you that a change of scenery is necessary and slowly pushes his legs up, creaking joint by creaking joint until he’s standing with your head still tucked into his shoulder. He sweeps your legs out from under you, not that they were really supporting anything, and carries you without complaint into the living room to lay you carefully on the sofa.

For a minute he leaves you and you’re confused. The room is blurred but you can tell that it’s a different colour, a warm beige compared to an icy green. The big, black television set seats itself in your eye line. You stare at it until you can see dots appearing like stars in the night’s sky. They dance across the screen forming patterns, constellations you don’t recognise, the face of a man you do, a tall bottle, a short glass. You groan and screw your eyes shut against it but even in the darkness of your mind’s eye the dots follow you and dance for you. You can’t escape them, at least not yet and they continue waltzing around, producing images of ice and liquids not innocent enough to be water.

A hand grasps yours and you open your eyes. He’s just about in your field of vision, sat on the floor, leaning against the sofa. The TV’s on now. Displaying some inane crap you can’t name but reminds why you weren’t all that bothered when you could no longer afford a TV.

He presses a dry kiss to your knuckles, making them tingle in an unfamiliar but not objectionable way. You decide that what’s on the TV doesn't matter so much when his thumb is lazily brushing yours. You still keep an eye on the television though, just in case it tries to insinuate its constellations in your mind again. Every now and then a few dots appear in seemingly random places on the screen. Douglas kisses your hand again every time or squeezes it tightly, to bring you back to him. All the while the furniture is laughing at you. You swear you can hear it.

***

You’ve heard the expression ‘the calm before the storm’. You’ve read meteorological reports on the technicalities. You know that air descending from clouds becomes drier and forms a blanket of compressed air which dampens the cloud formation to create an eerily still atmosphere. You know that, could probably give a lecture on it. What you don’t know is how long it lasts in the metaphorical sense. How long the peace lasts before it is shattered by the tornado. What you also don’t know, but in retrospect it should be obvious, is how painful the anticipation is, how thickly it coats the atmosphere until you can no longer breathe. That you will do anything just to get rid of the artificial humidity created in the airless hush.

You’ve been lying on the sofa for hours now. Douglas mentions the Prague trip on Saturday once, suggesting that there was no way you will be able to fly in this state, that he will have to go on his own. Your response sends him to the kitchen in guarded silence.

“Why can’t you stay still?”

It isn’t venomous. Your tone is laced more with the exhaustion of a harried mother than with the cruelty an embittered alcoholic. He turns to look at you. He has just walked back from the kitchen to the arm chair for the umpteenth time and seems to be preparing for the return lap when you growl out the query and he pauses mid-step.

“You indicated that my presence was less that welcome,” he replies a little tersely.

“Then why don’t you stay in the kitchen?”

“Because you are not going through withdrawal in the kitchen. I promised I would help you and I will. Right now I’m helping by keeping an eye on you, making sure you don’t have a bad turn, become ill or injure yourself.” He pauses for effect, looking to you to see the usual begrudging admission that signifies he has a point, expressed with facial muscles if not with words. “Any other questions?” he adds smugly.

“One. Did you suffer like this, when you went through withdrawal? Did it ache and stab and tear at you? Did it drive you mad with heat and cold and fear? Did you think you were going to die to the extent that you would have sold your soul for one more drink?”

He is silent while the questions catch up with him. He murmurs ‘that’s many more than one question’ but it seems even to you to be an attempt to buy time.

“Yes,” he admits almost inaudibly, carried out of his mouth by a seemingly involuntary breath.

“Good,” you spit, without a pause, glaring at him with loathing.

He opens his mouth to speak but finds no words, not even sounds to express what he is desperately trying not to feel. He repeats ‘it’s not his fault’ in his head like a chanted prayer, but it doesn't drown out the number of brutal insults he could, and part of him want to, shout back.

“Stop moving,” you snarl simply. “Or go away.”

He watches the muscles around your eyes twitch; stares transfixed at the tremors in your hands, sees the sweat bead on your skin and fancies that he can even observe your pulse, beating like a war drum in your neck. He chooses the latter and strides with enviable composure back towards the kitchen, closing the door with a soft click.

You relax back into the sofa, tossing and turning when you can’t find a spot to settle in. You think it’s because you’re too hot at first but then you reflect that the horrible feeling, that calm before the storm, hasn’t gone away. The anticipation of something is still there and you wonder what could be worse then what you’ve just said.

***

God it’s cold. The heating’s on, nearly full blast, but it still feels like you’re camping in the arctic. The duvet cover you took from the airing cupboard is too thin to be of any use, but it still smells of Douglas a bit, god knows how.

Your ineffectual attempts at sleep are thwarted by the restless energy coursing through your veins, searching for any last vestiges of alcohol that could be lurking in the plasma. An hour or two ago, Douglas clocks off from his kitchen bound vigil and retires to the bedroom. His steps falter at an indistinct point behind the sofa, but resume when no speech is forthcoming from either of you. The door is closed just on the quieter side of a slam. You ignore it then and refuse to acknowledge it as it tugs at your sensibility now.

An irritating buzzing strikes up somewhere off to your left and you curse the existence of every insect past, present and future. The noise recedes into the distance, heading in the direction of the now empty kitchen. Good riddance, you think, but even when it ebbs, sleep continues to elude you. Curling further into the purloined duvet cover doesn't insulate you any more against the cold. The sofa conspires against your body to ensure that no amount of comfort will be given by even the smallest inch of cushion and you aren’t tired enough to sleep on the floor. The slim chance that sleep will actually come on the hard floorboards, followed by the thought of waking up, limbs splayed and tangled with the duvet cover, puts you off completely. Too many memories that you don’t want to come back right now.

The buzzing is back. It’s funny, you only really notice the hush you’ve been enjoying now that it’s gone. The noise gets louder, closer, then it’s joined by another higher pitched drone from a completely different direction. You look over to the front door but see nothing. You don’t expect to. No light penetrates to the alcove where the door sits even during the day and your vision isn’t up to its usual standard now, but your hearing seems alright.

Both insects flit happily around the room, seeming to circle you as if they were wild beasts about to engage in battle. They get closer and closer, your eyes straining all the time to catch even a glimpse of them, to know where to aim a yellow clad fist.

Then the two flies are interrupted by something else, something more sinister. The sound of multiple spindly legs crawling across rough wood pervades the air and momentarily scares the buzzing into silence. You turn to look hesitantly at the coffee table. It is completely clear.

A panicked murmur whooshes past your ear, making you whip your head round, twisting your neck painfully, and swat away at empty air. The yellow fabric of your hand meets no resistance of a buzzing nature, or any resistance at all come to that, and your frustrated stare falls back to the table and you freeze.

Beetles. Hundreds, thousands, too many to count really, swarming at you with the deafening scratch of a million tiny claws. Then the reinforcements arrive and the insistent drone is everywhere not covered by the army of beetles. Your hand fly to your ears but the sound persists, it doesn't even quieten. You start to feel the insects breaching your defences, reaching your feet, crawling up your legs.

You scream.

Pure terror compressed down and released in a loud wail at the press of a nerve by the limb of an insect. The scream keeps coming, engaging the noises of the creatures of the room in battle until they surrender and flee as your head is pulled against something warm. You pick up the fight where your vocal chords left off, at first but something grips your shoulders and arms.

“Martin,” it says. “Martin, calm down.”

You won’t listen, it’s a trick it must be, the battalion of beetles must be using this as a smoke screen while they regroup for a counter offensive.

“Martin,” the diversion tries again. “Calm down, it’s me. It’s Douglas.”

They wouldn’t use him would they? Possibly, if they were being truly cunning. You hesitantly crack an eye open and relax the shrieks when you see that it really is Douglas you are held against.

“It’s alright, I’m here. Shush now, I’m here,” Douglas soothes. He rocks you slightly and the indignation you would usually feel at being treated like a child is washed away by a tidal wave of relief as he cuddles you and you do your best not to sob into his shoulder again.

“Douglas,” you force out into the curve of his neck.

“I know. I’m here now.”

“There were...beetles, everywhere, hundreds of them...and the noises...so much noise...” you ramble.

Douglas feels a wrench in his chest. It’s worse than he’d hoped.

“There’s nothing here, Martin,” he pauses. There are two options here. He could tell you that you were hallucinating and you then either accept it as part of the withdrawal but be a little bit closer to breaking for it, or you would deny it outright and another row would follow. The other option is to tell you that they were here but are now gone. You don’t have the brain power to understand that it can’t be true. You still have complete faith in your senses; they are all you have left, after all.

“They...they’re gone now and they won’t come back, I promise.” He hates himself just a little bit but he hates the lie’s necessity even more.

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Douglas starts humming old songs so the silence doesn't come back and fill itself with false noises to get you back on edge. You lean closer to him, an unconscious action you’ve done many times before without thinking.

“Please don’t go,” you beg in a soft undertone. Even you aren’t entirely sure if you mean now or for the Prague trip on Saturday.

He doesn't say anything.

You start to cry.

***


	6. Chapter 6

Why is he still here?

You don’t know but you use your moment of lucidity for the day to be grateful, truly, unendingly grateful that he is. All through the night he stayed with you, even when you roughly pushed him away when his body heat became too much. He took up his sentry post on the worn armchair while you continued to occupy the sofa. Sometime in the night he replaced the duvet cover with a blanket. You only noticed when you looked down and saw that the garish yellow had given way to a much less offensive shade of vermillion.

You look to him now, asleep at his post in the arm chair, snoring lightly. A single strand of hair falls across his lips and gracefully dances with each breath. You watch with brief delight before the clarity is over and the hour of irrationality is announced with the cackle of a monster with green eyes.

He’s sleeping. Gone away to realms of dreams, carried away by Morpheus, on a boat to bloody Hushabye Mountain, whatever euphemism you wish to use, the fact is the same. He’s asleep and you’re awake. That’s not fair.

He looks so peaceful, angelic. On any other day you would watch him sleep, committing every line, involuntary movement and muffled noise to memory for use later, possibly for teasing. Today you’re just jealous. Seconds tick reluctantly into minutes and he still slumbers and it’s still not fair.

It’s as if the poison in your stare wakes him in the end. It’s sudden and sharp, a gasp of breath as his eyes flash open and he has to blink repeatedly to get his vision back in order. To anyone else it would seem like he was waking from a nightmare. But this is Douglas; Douglas doesn't have anything so human as nightmares, does he?

“Morning,” he yawns. He is the usual textbook image of calm, except there were shadows, seemingly absent before, now lurking in his dark brown irises.“Sorry, Martin, I must have nodded off.”

He’s...apologising? You don’t understand. He was stealing sleep that was rightfully yours mere minutes ago and now he’s sorry, trying to make amends for what he can’t return. That isn’t fair either. All he’s done is taken something else: your right to be the injured party, the one who can make the other feel guilty without a blot on their own conscience.

“I’m going to put some breakfast on, alright. I’ll just be in the kitchen. I’ll bring you some water in a minute.”

Gone before you can bark out a response, he takes something else from you: him. That wonderful, reliable existence that somehow got entangled with yours and hasn’t managed to pull itself free yet. It makes your place in the world so much better and even if you are wondering how long it will take him to notice that you have tied his part of the knotted chords of fate to a wall, you mostly enjoy it too much to let it ruin the time you have.

Pain flashes in your stomach as if in punishment for dropping your guard and allowing yourself to be happy. It’s a rusty knife that stabs and twists, churning your organs then forcing them through a mangle. It happens again a few moments later, a sting that spreads up your sides to push a whimper from your mouth.

Douglas returns as a third flare ignites near your kidneys, carrying a glass of water which he places on the coffee table. From there it has the perfect vantage point to sneer at you with a haughty mix of disdain and derision. He doesn't look like himself. He’s pale and translucent, like he’s made of dry ice. He kneels down in front of you, every move he makes has a slow dreamlike quality, and in an instant knows how you are feeling, you hate it when he does that.

“Keep going, Martin,” he encourages in a voice that echoes strangely. “Try to focus yourself, think about why you are doing this.”

He leans down to kiss your sticky forehead and you think that it is the single best idea you’ve ever heard. Keep your mind distracted and the body will soon fall in line, it must do. Thank God for Douglas, what would you be without him? Right, no time like the present. Why are you doing this? _Why are you doing this?_

One: it’s too expensive.

 _His footsteps recede into the distance, echoing ominously._

Two: you never get enough sleep even before you spend the nights drinking.

 _They start to sound like shoe leather treading on concrete._

Three: you’re getting fed up of passing out on the floor every night.

 _They start coming back towards you._

Four: the blackouts have begun to worry you.

 _They crash like thunder with each advancing stride._

Five: taking the empty bottles to the recycling bin should not have to be done in the dead of night because you fear   
what the dysfunctional neighbours will think.

 _A rush of air raises the hairs on the back of your neck._

Six: you can’t show your face in pubs anymore.

 _You move away from the hand that seats itself where it isn’t wanted._

Seven: there are things you can’t let yourself remember.

 _A blaring horn and gust of warm air as a car passes inches from your quivering back._

Eight: it stops you from thinking straight.

 _You fall into the road, hearing a bark of hoarse laughter from about you._

Nine: it makes you hurt people, and get hurt back.

The footsteps begin to fade away again.

Ten: it’s dangerous.

 _It could have been so much worse._

 

You snap back to the living room like you’ve been pulled out of a trance. Your stomach reminds you it’s still not forgiven you and the rest of your body seconds the sentiment. You curse your mind as you clutch your chest. You curse your imagination and your memories. Douglas returns, speaking to you so indistinctly it’s like hearing him through Gertie’s intercom after it was inadvertently bathed with coffee. He smiles at you, kindly.  
Most of all, you curse him.

***

Come the afternoon, you’re restless. You’ve been lying on the sofa for many hours, too many and you want to leap up and run outside come rain or shine, probably rain. You’re like a dog bounding around the room and scratching at the front door, wanting to go for a walk.

The only part of you not alive like a sugar rush is your body. Your mind thrashes against the inactive prison but nothing comes of it, you simply cannot get your joints to move. They stay stationary on the sofa, belligerently immobile, wondering what all the fuss is about.

After more tortured minutes where your inner puppy began howling with frustration, you finally have enough. You force action into your legs first, pushing them on the floorboards. They bear the cold floor with grumbling dignity but crack to show their displeasure when you try to stretch. After that, your arms. One falls limply from your chest to disappear from view over the edge of the sofa. The other calls out to its fallen partner, regaining movement at a shocking speed and reaching out for your elbow, pulling the attached forearm, wrist and hand back to safety and cradling them in relief. You use the momentum to press the rescuer to the back of the sofa and push yourself into a seated position, letting the fluffy sheet of auburn fall from your shoulders.

You decided after much deliberation that there is only one way to do this, one way to force yourself back into a more vertical position with your legs supporting you: like you would remove a plaster, quickly. On the count of two instead of the three your mother had promised. You count out. One. Or maybe that’s not such a good idea in this case, maybe... Two!

You rise suddenly, up to your full, admittedly unimpressive, height in one unfurl of your spine. You wobble a bit and clutch the arm of the sofa for temporary support while you gather your various components into a working human, then prepare them for takeoff. You give the fabric one last squeeze then relinquish your grip, pushing away just a little, waiting for your legs to hold you up.

As the white hot pain sears through your stomach, up your sides and into your skull, as white spots replace the wallpaper in your vision, when you are crashing down to the floor with no hope of preventing the inevitable, it is then that you agree. It was not such a good idea in this case.

***

Through the black emptiness that keeps you company while consciousness leaves you, you hear Douglas’ voice. You’d expect easy listening music if you’re honest. He’s saying odd things, something in another language it sounds like, alternating between frantic and forcibly calm tones. You try to ask him to repeat that last bit, but all that comes from you is a rough groan. His voice gets a little higher in pitch, his words come faster. You try to tell him to slow down this time, but another groan is emitted instead, slightly weaker.

There’s a pressure on your very being, like something is trying to keep you held down where you are but you still feel like you’re about to float away on the breeze. No thoughts really make their way into the isolation. Only Douglas’ voice and the feeling of a touch on your skin that you can easily imagine is Douglas. You could stay like this forever, no pain, no worries, no alcohol, just Douglas and quiet.

The black engulfs you fully and you are gone, but not before you hear ‘don’t you bloody die on me’ choked out almost on a sob.

***

The light burns when you wake even though there’s very little of it. The thin strip, a deep orange, the colour of the sunset. Evening then. How long have you been out? Remnants of a nightmare are slow to fade away in the growing gloom. You look around and find Douglas conspicuous by his absence and the dreams regroups for a counter offensive.

Panic, all through your being until you are practically made of it. Your head spins wildly, eyes searching the darkness desperately for Douglas. He’s not there. At all. You try to call out for him but your throat is parched and uncooperative. Your mind tells you that he’s gone. He must have done, packed his bags and left you like the burden you’ve become, that you always were really. If you look hard enough there will be a note somewhere that lays the facts out in a detached and frank way that apologises but explains firmly that he has to leave.

Then you think about where Douglas would have gone, so you can go there, plead with him to take you back, it’ll be different, you’ll be different, if he just gives you one last chance. But then you realise that isn’t fair, and if you really loved Douglas like you know deep down you do, you’ll let him go. Go to wherever it is he’s retreated to. Which brings you back to your first thought, where could he have gone? No matter what way you look, from what angle you approach the question, you simply can’t imagine the existence of anything outside this room. Okay the sun is out there, that’s a given, but...surely...there isn’t anything else actually out there. This room where you are and Douglas was, that’s it, isn’t it?

But there was something else once, a dim memory of light beige and gentle red, something soft you used to curl up on together, something electrical that used to play in the background while you kissed. You’re confused. Is it memory or fantasy? Is there something else? You stare at the walls as if petitioning them for an answer and they move. It’s a stupid thought from a stupefied mind but you are quite prepared to swear, in front of witnesses, on whatever Holy Scripture is placed in front of you, that they move. They edge closer, inch by inch, like they are approaching to whisper their reply into your ear.

The air thickens and heats up. It’s like someone has placed the whole room on a Bunsen burner for some kind of experiment on the limits of the human, mind and body, soul left out. You’re shaking now, tears falling freely, curling into a ball against the headboard. You swallow, feeling the thick saliva force its way down your throat like treacle. A sob falls from your mouth as water cascades from your eyes and it takes you a minute to comprehend you just made a sound. You try again, emitting a small bark drowned in despair. It makes the walls pause in their approach, suddenly uncertain. With new courage you suck in a breath and shout ‘Douglas’ in a miserable wail.

You don’t expect him to come. You don’t expect him to be anywhere near your voice could reach. If he even exists at all in a world beyond these four walls. There is no returning noise, no acknowledgement and you don’t realise how high your hopes rose until they plummet towards the unfeeling ground. One more try, you decide, and prepare your lungs with a deep breath before crying out his name again through the waterfall that your cheeks are becoming. The walls are laughing at you now, believing like you that Douglas has left, and will not be coming back.

“Hey now. What’s all this noise about?”

It’s like a light in the darkness, the tiny spec of light that gives survivors of disasters hope that they will be rescued. He enters the room and the walls halt in disbelief and slowly return to their normal positions as he passes them, glaring at him with annoyance. Before you know it you’re encased in his arms, like you want to be forever, a place you’ve decided which is your favourite ever. He chuckles to himself and it is music to your ears.

“Please don’t leave me,” you beg.

“What? I’m not going to leave you, Martin.”

“You’re not? But what about...”

“I said I would never leave you and I am nothing if not a man of my word.”

It’s better than his laughter. It’s...miraculous, something entirely perfect, something that will stay in your mind because you will think about it every day for as long as you live, and probably for a long time after.

“Are you alright now?”

“Stay with me,” you give as an answer.

“Alright, I’m not going anywhere.” It would have a better effect if you couldn’t hear the smile in his voice. Not that it matters much when he pulls his arms tighter around you and lets you cling to his jumper like it’s saving you from drowning. You can just tell that neither of you are going to sleep tonight.

***


	7. Chapter 7

Watching the sunrise together is becoming a regular part of your relationship as of late. You never did it much before now, on overnight stays mostly, and you doubt that you will do it again when all this is over, if it’s ever over, if you’re still together then. Oh God, so many ifs. The sunrise should be nice, watching it with Douglas should be nice but the light hurts and the sun is making the room too hot to stand and your skin feels like it’s burning.

Wordlessly, Douglas slides away from you, detaches his arms from your shoulders and waist and treads his way across the carpet to the window. The sunlight blocks out his colours, until he is just a shadow against a blinding brightness. He’s a strange, ambiguous shadow, indistinct but familiar and somehow not as sinister as you expect. To you all shadows have taken on malevolence and a malice that means you will be left in the morning with a feeling of violation and a gap in your memory. But even encased in darkness, he dispels the usual fear that would grip you. You could describe every inch of him while blindfolded, so a bit of shade means nothing. He closes the curtains and the spell is broken. He’s back and he turns to look at you and recoils just a little, in a single rare moment where his self control slips and you note it and shy away into the damp pillow.

He looks at you and continues looking. You haven’t changed much since Monday. You’re still pale with sweat slickened skin. The bruising under your eyes still grows darker with every passing hour that insomnia plagues you. Your body, hunched and bent as it is, with bed sheets half heartedly clinging to you as if to preserve a sense of modesty you lost long ago, still trembles like it’s the focus of an intense draught. Your hand clings, claw like, to your abdomen in a gesture that is now unconscious. You flash your dull grey eyes at him and cant your eyebrows into an expression of beseeching, begging him to make it better.

He gulps down an uneasy swallow and then the room changes to a much, greyer, much dingier place which was more like a catacomb with walls made of thick bricks and covered in mould. He remembers lying on the damp, filth encrusted floor, adding his tears and vomit to the residue. Two days he faced withdrawal the first time round, on his own because he was the Air England Captain Douglas Richardson, and if he couldn’t do such a piddly little thing as give up alcohol on his own, well then, no one could. The latter, of course, turned out to be true. He spent two days, every hour seeming like a month on its own, spilling his guts into the floor of an abandoned house he broke into, to keep himself away from temptation. By the end of the first day he was in intense pain, every part of him burned and writhed and demanded that he placate them with alcohol, now, this instant. By midday on the second, the sweat was pouring off him in buckets and the broken furniture was trying to kill him. By the end of the day he couldn’t move and very seriously thought he was going to die.

On the dawning of day three, he knew he couldn’t do it anymore. He crawled over to the window he’d entered by, clawed at the boards he’d nailed back in place, not caring if they tore strips of skin away until his fingers were raw and bleeding, and ran as fast as his legs could carry him down to the nearest pub. He used the money he’d sewn into the inside of his jacket for emergencies and brought two large whiskeys which he poured into one glass and downed. Even now he remembers how much of a relief the lukewarm liquid was as it slipped down his throat and how he felt so much more himself when he turned to the barman and ordered another.

He looks at you now and you haven’t changed much, but you will, he will make sure of that. He knows that he needed those two days to tell him that he wasn’t immortal, that no man is an island and to know the horrible bite of failure he’d felt as he left the pub, inebriated, again. He doesn’t want that to happen to you, but he can’t help but feel that he trying to help you through this is another of those things he thinks he can do on his own, when really he just can’t.

***

You’re back on the trusty sofa that’s slightly more accepting of your presence this time. He’s back in his sanctuary: the kitchen, making tea. He hasn’t spoken to you since he closed the curtains hours ago, not even when he supports your dead weight as you shuffle at a snail's pace along the carpets, watching the colours change with the light. He only makes the smallest of grunts when he lowers you onto the sofa, straining his back. You want to apologise when you hear it, for the hassle you’re causing. Instead you squeak out a request for water and a look appears on his face like you have just said something marvellous. It makes you feel lighter and more optimistic, if a little confused.

The door opens on un-oiled hinges and a glass of water appears on the table in front of your eyes as if conjured by a magician. You can hear Douglas sipping what you presume is tea next to you, and then something else which causes you to give a low whimper. Douglas is kneeling in front of you instantly, whispering in your ear.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Television,” you grit out. “Too loud. Would you...would you turn it off?”

Douglas turns his head behind him, his bulk mercifully blocking the screen from view. His frown turns back to you.

“Martin,” he begins worriedly and with a hint of something akin to disappointment, “it is off.” He moves aside so you can see for yourself. It is.

The moment of confusion gives way to anger and you turn your accusatory glare onto Douglas. His features harden a fraction, but otherwise remain impassive. It’s like he knows what’s coming and you can see that, but you are too far gone to stop it.

“You,” you hiss at him. “You did it on purpose didn’t you?”

“Martin...”

“You switched it off when I couldn’t see, so I would think I was losing the plot, going mad.”

“I’m really not in the mood for...”

“It all makes sense, of course it does. You want me to think I’m mad so I’ll rely on you forever.”

“Think, Martin.”

“I am. It’s all coming clear to me now. Everything was you. It all...where are you going?”

“I am going back to the kitchen until you calm down. I’ll be there if you need me.”

“But...Douglas. Douglas?”

He’s gone, his footsteps fade, the door hinges squeal and the door slams. You settle down on the sofa, or try to, and begin contemplating what other mysteries still remain to be solved.

***

Over time your body grows fidgety while your mind gains a sort of lethargy. Your muscles want nothing more than to run for miles, for hours but your mind says no, and you lie on the sofa while your body sulks.

There are so many things you should be thinking about, you’re sure. There is a trip soon, you think, somewhere in Romania maybe. There’s your flat, maybe even someone who has noticed you hadn’t been back in a while. Your family? Would they have called in the past few days? It wouldn’t have been anything important anyway. Friends? Well, can you even call them friends? People you drink with maybe. No, thinking about it, they probably didn’t even notice your presence when you were sat next to them ordering you eighth drink of the evening. If you’re honest, you barely notice you’re sat next to them when you’re ordering your eighth drink of the evening.

You haven’t heard a peep from Douglas yet and conspiracy theories are beginning to lose their allure with each moment he’s absent. Your headache’s back too. Maybe it was him keeping it bay. At least there’s no real light in this room to inflict more pain on it. The glass on the table gives you surreptitious glances and gentle reminders about who put it there. You deliberately stop looking at it, or in its direction. At all. In the end you raise a limp hand and shove it off the table, hearing it bounce and roll along the floor and smear the water into the rug. You don’t watch it as it rolls away under the sofa and out of sight because you weren’t looking at it in the first place. You weren’t.

With the satisfaction of a job well done, your body gives up the fight and consents to the exhaustion. You drift on the edge of consciousness for minutes, snapping awake at unpredictable intervals and then let your eyelids flutter closed, until they don’t open again.

 

Hours later you wake with a start to the remnants of a dream that evades you as you try to track it down. As you settle back into the cushions and your gaze is drawn, purely by chance, to the table in the middle of the rug. On it is a fresh, glistening glass of water and two paracetamol tablets, sitting idly by, minding their own business. Your headache thuds in acknowledgement, living its life while it can before your senses are dulled by the medication. You reach a shaky hand over to the pills, pop them in your mouth one by one with a small swallow of water in between. It’s still fairly cold, can’t have been out here long.

Thoughts of Douglas attack you. How good he’s been to you, how much kindness he’s shown and how little he’s complained. How you’ve snapped at him at every turn. You take another slurp of water and lay the glass back down on the Christmas coaster. You cry in shame until your tears pull you down into sleep and into the illusive dream. Meanwhile the glass stands tall on its mat, point well made.

***

In the living room, on the sofa, you twitch and tremble against the cushions. The paracetamol wore off half an hour ago and your headache is back with its reinforcements. Yours are stuck at the sink behind your own lines.

You start crying sometimes and don’t understand why. It stops as quickly as it begins only to restart minutes later. On top of that, your thought processes are getting slower. It takes at least five minutes for any idea to form then another ten to contemplate enacting it. Moving a hand even so much as an inch becomes a large scale project and somehow it’s just not worth it. It’s so much easier just to lie on your side, head propped on a cushion and one finger resting on your lip. A dim metallic tang dimly reminds you of the damage done to your fingers when you locked yourself in the bathroom and you submit your request for movement to your eyes, waiting with the patience of a man with nothing better to do for it to clear. Your eyes move and you can see the dried blood caked to your fingers begin to loosen with the heat and moisture coming from your mouth.

The red makes your brain clunk into action again and memories shuffle arthritically forward, played by an old projector onto a moth eaten screen. You were beaten up when you were eleven. The children at your new school didn’t like you but your brother found out and he went round to talk to their brothers and they didn’t come near you again. Though you asked more than once what he said to them, he never told you and after a couple of months you stopped asking.

When you were fifteen it happened again, different boys, same reasons for despising you, probably. This time you tried to hide it, hid the scrapes and bruises and took to going to the library after school, studying heavy books on aviation. You told your parents it was a football club and then when they saw a scraped knee you didn’t cover in time you had a readymade excuse. Your brother had moved away by then.

When you reached your twenties, the men around you were far too old to be beating you up like they used to in playgrounds. Instead they ostracised you or teased you if there was no way your presence could be avoided. But when you drank heavily, after you failed an exam for example, you became someone all together different and they seemed to like you less and more at the same time. More because you were freer, less inhibited and a little bit more fun. You still talked about flying endlessly but your words were so slurred it was very easy for them to pretend you weren’t. Less because, well you did get in a fight once, more than once, the way an ex told it through a hangover and over a packed suitcase. You vaguely remember shouting at a man in a bar then sitting dazed against a wall staring at a splash of red on the grey floor.

Drinking has taken a lot from you really. It took an exam, though you still blame the examiner for that. It took your friends, your lovers, well lover. It took your peace of mind, your certainty in knowing what you wanted and what you had to do. It took and still takes your common sense. The only things it hasn’t taken yet is Douglas and MJN and you are so close to losing them both. Douglas. Dear God that man. It would kill you, if he left you now. You haven’t had nearly enough time with him, being wanted by him. You just need more time.

You run a shaky hand through your hair and stare at the yellow light emerging from under the door to the kitchen, thinking of him.

 

In the kitchen, his safe haven, Douglas sits on the floor, leaning against the cupboard under the sink. He swirls a cup of strong tea around with his hands, for the first time in years wishing it was a good single malt. He knows that he should be out there sitting next to you, comforting you, talking to you about rubbish, keeping you grounded. But every time he raises the nerve to get up, he thinks about you accusing him and you shouting at him and cursing him and he settles back down. It makes him feel terrible, less than a man, someone who can’t even go to someone who is suffering as you are because he knows what it feels like. The memories are scabs in his mind, healed over but still vulnerable to assault.

He remembers snatches here and there throughout the one sided conversations he has with you. Long nights blissfully spent alone with a bottle or two, fights in bars that turned very nasty very quickly, exasperation and pain on the faces of loved ones, his little girl’s eyes. He remembers the talk from Air England bosses, the one that essentially cost him his job. The smuggling charge did it really, but whilst it couldn’t technically be proven, the drinking, however, was a provable nail to hammer into his coffin, and by God did his boss hammer it home.

Of course he knows that you don’t mean it. Any barbs you raise are barely enough to graze the surface of his thick skin. Usually. On any other issue but this. He’s lost so much to this, he can feel you slipping away every time you shout at him to leave you alone. He worked so hard to be where he was, then to watch as it crashed and burned and left him empty and broken. Then he built everything back up from worse than scratch, from worse than nothing. He’s watched you grow over the years, watched you develop and he kissed you because he wanted to and he wanted to taste you before you left for better things, seven attempts at passing your exams withstanding. He can’t, well wouldn’t if his life depended on it, deny that he is a catch, oh of course he is, but he privately confesses to being surprised that you fell into his arms so willingly and at how deeply he fell for you when you did. Swearing off marriage after three failed attempts is one thing, swearing off love, is quite another it seems.

He runs a shaky hand through his hair and he stares, following the yellow light emerging out from under the door into the living room, thinking of you.

***


	8. Chapter 8

You leap off the sofa, crash to your knees on the floor, clutch your growling stomach, and push yourself up again. Your legs propel you forward to the closed door of the bathroom and you skid through it, before bruising your knees once more on the tiled floor and heaving over the cold porcelain. Nothing comes from the depths of your empty, cavernous stomach. It cramps and roars, finally getting its chance for revenge for the years of neglect and eccentric eating patterns. You wheeze pitifully in the echoing room and try not to sob as you hold your stomach and plead forgiveness.

The floor underneath you begins to steal heat from your legs, leaving you feeling like you’re made of ceramic. Rising carefully, you flush and move to the skink to splash water on your face. Your hands shake wildly, making you hold your wrist steady to turn the tap on. You try your best not to look in the mirror. You don’t want to see yourself like this, but the inevitable pull of morbid curiosity tugs your chin upwards, even as common sense closes your eyes. Then, ever so slowly, your eyelids creep apart a minute fraction. Then a bit more, then a bit more until one eye is open fully and the other soon joins it. Your heart plummets.

It’s not good. Not by any stretch of the imagination, worse even than the last time you looked in the mirror, before leaving your flat. The bags under your eyes look like they are where you keep all your worries. Your cheekbones are much more defined; in fact both your face and your frame are looking increasingly skeletal. You look at yourself and it hurts, physically hurts.

You know what usually helps, what used to drive the visions away when you caught a glimpse of your appearance in the mirror in the hallway of your flat. You always had a bottle of something on hand to take the edge off. That’s all you need, just a small one, only a little bit, a single measure to stop the images, to stop the shuddering, to stop your head ripping at you. God just one, just one, vodka, beer, wine, fuck anything! Anything, just to stop the itch.

With that thought controlling your mind, you run into the kitchen to conduct a desperate search. Douglas must have left it in the night, when you were locked in your own private prison. You begin throwing open cupboards and draws with abandon, heedless of the amount of noise you must be making.

***

He awakes to what must be World War Three being fought in the strangely localised area of his kitchen. That’s the only possible explanation. His sleep fogged mind forgets you for a minute. It merely contemplates the racket you’re making as you ransack the cupboards with mounting urgency. But when his mind clears and he looks around the bedroom and remembers, he’s out of the bed and racing towards you as if he’d been shot out of a canon.

You ignore him when he stands and stares from the doorway. He pointedly clears his throat but you’re still too busy trying to find something to take the burn away. Even the drain cleaner is looking promising to your eyes.

“Martin,” he tries. Still you ignore him.

“Martin,” a little louder this time. You offer him nothing.

“Must be something,” you mutter frantically to yourself “Something, something, anything, please.”

“Martin.”

And just like that he’s right behind you, talking into your neck. You can feel the heat of his breath as it swirls its way to your skin and caresses your ear lobe, making your whole body shudder.

“Think logically.”

His hands burn holes in your arms as he lays them on down and gently massages the tightly wound knots of tension in the muscles.

“I haven’t had a drink in nearly a decade. Any alcohol I win from Carolyn, I sell on. Why would I have any in my flat now? Especially when I’ve been trying to keep you sober for nearly a week.”

You pause. It makes sense when he explains it. Why didn’t you think about that? Were you thinking?

“It’s alright, it comes with the shakes and the nausea, you just have to ride it out.”

You let out a groan, more a howl of despair really. His hands stop moving on your shoulders.

“I don’t think,” you stutter. “I don’t think I want to this anymore.”

His fingers tense.

“I can’t do this anymore. I’m not strong enough, please, Douglas.” You look at him, wide eyes watering. “Just one drink, please.”

“No,” he replies instantly. Your face contorts into a grimace of agony.

“Please, Douglas. Maybe after that, I’ll be stronger. Douglas. Please. I need it.”

“No,” he repeats. His voice is steady and controlled, even though he feels his heart beating harder by the minute. “You don’t need it, Martin, you just think you do.”

“Please,” you whine again.

“No!”

Your eyes darken. Your expression darkens. The sudden bark from him makes your mind glaze over with a red mist of rage. How dare he deny you this when he knows it could help you? Didn’t he say he would help you? One simple thing that could save you.

“You want me to fail,” you accuse, pulling away from his caress and falling hard against a cupboard. He doesn't say anything, he’s too stunned.

“You want me to fail so that I’ll never be as good as you, so that I’ll forever be in your shadow, just where you like me.”

He continues to stare at you, mouth falling open. You’re on a roll now.

“You’re always so high and mighty, always think you know what’s best, but you can be wrong too.” You’re starting to sound like a teenager again, arguing with your dad. You shout and you scream and you push, not noticing the tightly controlled placidity on his face unwind bit by bit.

“You’re wrong about this, just like you were wrong about Helena.”

“That,” he interrupts tersely, “is quite enough, Martin.”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” you acknowledge. “But still, Douglas, you’re wrong this time. I’m fine now or I will be soon. I shouldn’t be here, I need to be out with the van earning money.”

“You really shouldn’t.”

“It’s my livelihood, Douglas, I need it to keep going.”

“A minute ago you needed a drink.”

“That’s...it’s not what I meant.”

“No? So you don’t need ‘just one more’ to keep you strong then? You’re fine as you are, are you?”

“Yes, perfectly.”

“Walk in a straight line then. Hold yourself up for long enough to make it to the door. Pick up a glass of water without spilling half of it. You are not fine, Martin, far from it. And a drink will not improve your situation.”

“It always did before.”

“This is precisely the problem, Martin. You are fooling yourself into thinking that you were functioning well with the drink but you weren’t, you were barely surviving. You forget that I’ve been through this too.”

“It’s not the same, though. I’m not that far gone.”

“Oh come on, Martin.”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t know anything about my past, Martin. I’ve never told you anything.”

“Well then, now’s your chance, you know all about mine.”

“No I don’t, not about this.”

“Oh.”

“I told you that there would come a time when you would have to give me your life story. Now seems as good a time as   
any, don’t you think?”

“Yes. You go first.”

“Oh for God’s sake, we aren’t in primary school.”

You poke your tongue out at him. He just closes his eyes.

“Alright,” you say when the silence gets too much. “Alright, I did want a drink, but it was a momentary blip, I’m okay now.”

“Really? You can honestly look me in the eye and tell me that you aren’t, at this very moment, thinking about how wonderful it would be if the taps were linked to a beer barrel instead of a water tank? How good some rum would be in the unseasonable warmth. How much you want...”

“Stop it!”

“Precisely.”

You pause to breathe deeply. You suck air into your lungs like a vacuum cleaner and expel in short bursts the remnants you don’t want or need. Your breathing gets harder, as if you’re trying to banish your dependency with the carbon dioxide, but it evens out when you realise it is a hopeless endeavour.

“You know you can’t do any work the way you are right now, don’t you?” he asks after he’s watched your heart rate decrease to his satisfaction.

“I think I could. I could certainly drive the van, it’s not like I’m over the limit.”

“Oh hilarious, Martin,” he says dryly. “I’m not just talking about the van though.”

“The trip on Saturday.”

“Tomorrow, you mean.”

You knit your eyebrows into a perplexed line. Tomorrow? Where have the days gone?

“Tomorrow, of course,” you recover, you hope smoothly. “I’ll be fine.”

He shakes his head doubtfully.

“Well why not? I’m not going to be drunk or hung over. I won’t be worrying about gaps in my memory from the night before, I might even have had a full night’s sleep.”

“You won’t have, Martin, nothing is that easy this early.”

“Anyway,” you squeeze through clenched teeth. “It’s not like I will be under the influence. Completely the opposite in fact.”

“Therein we have the difficulty. You’ve seen the effects the withdrawal has.”

“I’m over the worst.”

“Are you?”

“Yes! Look at my hands.”

You hold them out in front of you, palms flat. They are shaking.

You look up and inadvertently meet his eyes. They project their easy blank expression at you before he turns them away and sighs deeply.

“Maybe...maybe the past few days haven’t been my finest, but they are behind me now. I don’t need...” your voice cracks on the word, “I don’t need al...alcohol-” that one is forced out through the thick mist of every memory and every craving you’ve ever had, “-Anymore.”

He doesn't say anything at first. He’s still looking off into the middle distance, somewhere in the direction of the toaster. You look at his hands, steady as rocks, lying in his lap. He moves one to wipe the fatigue from his eyes. His whole frame seems to be gradually losing its stability.

“You ran away at the start, on Sunday, do you remember?” he says eventually, still looking away.

You don’t.

“I went looking for you. I went to the local bars at first, I’ll admit, and I was surprised when you weren’t in any of them. I honestly thought that that would be the first place you would flee to.”

“Well that just shows how little trust in me you have. And how much less of a problem this is than what you’re making of it.”

He hums noncommittally. “But think what could have happened, if I had been right.”

You do think. You don’t like it.

“But you weren’t.”

“No, I wasn’t. Why didn’t you go out drinking that night, Martin?”

Why is he asking you? You barely remember it.

“I don’t know, I just, didn’t feel like it I suppose.”

“But you were stressed and you were scared, why didn’t you go for familiarity, for something you always ran to before?”

“I...I...”

“Martin, think, it’s important.”

“I...I don’t...”

“Yes you do, think.”

“I don’t know. I ran away from you, you kept talking about plans and giving things up and talking to people and I didn’t want any of it, I just wanted a drink.”

“So why didn’t you go and get one?”

“Because I didn’t have any money, alright?”

There, you’ve stunned him.

“Oh come on, like you never leave the house without your wallet. I didn’t have any money and I didn’t want to go back to you so I went for a walk instead. There, now you know.”

He nods and hums and you think there is a bar or two of disappointment mixed into the tune. He’s still not exactly looking at you, but he’s no longer melting the toaster with his eyes, so you count that as an improvement, even if you do feel the siren for teasing going off in your head.

Douglas thinks about this. He thought it was going to be something deep and meaningful. He was hoping for something that indicated a step on the road to recovery, just a little something. Although, he was fully prepared for you to tell him that you’d gotten lost and could find your way to a pub. Left you wallet at home, there was something endearing about that, something very Martin and more than little bit funny.

“What about Carolyn then?” he asks.

“What about her?”

“Well you have to tell her. You need her to give you time away from MJN.”

“What?” you screech.

“You’ll need time away to recover properly.”

“No. No. No. No!”

“Martin. You need to get away from stressful situations and piloting an aeroplane that’s falling apart is most definitely classed as stressful.”

“Only is as much as I have you for a co-pilot.”

Oh and it was going so well.

“You need some time, Martin, I took time away from Air England.”

“You lost your job at Air England, you mean.”

Oh no, do carry on, you’re doing brilliantly so far.

“Yes. Fair point. How did you find that out?”

“Carolyn told me once. I just worked it out from the date.”

“I see.”

“I can still do my job, you know,” you protest weakly. “I’m still the Captain.”

“Yes, you may be but you can’t fly a plane like this,” he says, too loud for your headache’s liking. “You’ll be putting people’s lives at risk.”

“It’s a cargo flight.”

“Oh and I suppose me, Arthur and Carolyn don’t count as people anymore?”

“I didn’t mean...”

“You have been irresponsible with your drinking in the past but never like this, Martin.”

“Oh so we’re talking about being irresponsible now are we? What about the gifting of five hundred Euros worth of flowers? Or the staggering amount of lemons you snuck through on the last cargo flight? And that’s just the smuggling operations. And that’s just the ones I know about. Don’t you dare lecture me on being irresponsible.”

“Irresponsible is staying up until two o’ clock in the morning supporting your local pub then flying a plane with eight passengers, two cabin crew members and a co-pilot, with a stinking hangover pounding in your ears,” he spits. “Irresponsible is drinking so much that can no longer see to walk back to your room. Irresponsible is letting someone buy you more drinks until you don’t notice when he’s molesting you.”

“You haven’t forgotten about that then?”

“No I haven’t!” He takes a deep breath, counting to ten very slowly. “If you cannot see how this will end, you are stupider than I thought.”

“I’m not stupid,” you say morosely. He gives you a sideways glance, the first point of contact. It’s an improvement, surely.

“I have you though don’t I? You’ll help me.”

“I can’t be there all the time, Martin.” He slumps backwards and tilts his head back to lean on the cupboard behind him. “And besides...” he trails off.

“What?” you enquire nervously.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it,” he replies after a pause.

“I don’t understand.”

“You can’t rely on someone to get you out of trouble and cling to them one minute only to push them away the next, and then expect them to keep coming back to you. People aren’t like that, Martin.”

“You mean...” you frown again, the clockwork in your brain working overtime to decipher him. “You mean that you aren’t going to come back anymore?”

“I didn’t say that,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“You promised,” you squeal hysterically.

“I know, I’m not going anywhere, calm down. But, Martin, I need you to...”

“To what?” you ask in a voice that suggests you would do just about anything. He shakes his head in exasperation.   
“Oh, I don’t think I know anymore.”

“But you always know.”

“Evidently not this time.”

“But, I need you.”

“Martin, what did I just say?”

“No, no, you always know what to do, Douglas and you said you wouldn’t leave me.”

“What do you want me to do about it, Martin, I need time to think.”

“We don’t have time, the trip’s tomorrow.”

“That was long enough that you would be perfectly fine, mere moments ago,” he scoffs.

“Stop twisting my words, you arrogant, selfish bastard.”

He freezes, so still he could be a statue. After a beat, he rises, carefully, using the work surface to pull himself up and wordlessly turns and strides out of the kitchen. You lean to the side and see him retreating at a fixed speed towards the front door, which he opens, steps out passed and closes it behind him. A faint click is audible over your beating heart and the door is locked. The little taps on the concrete, still at steady intervals, fade into silence and you are so very, very alone.

***

It’s dark by the time he comes back. You moved yourself to sit at the table, still in the kitchen. You doubt you could have made your legs take you any further than that. You hear the keys rattle as an early warning siren and try to remember the long speech you’ve been planning since half an hour after he left. His heavy stride comes towards you, rumbling like a tank and the minute he opens the door and aims a projectile at your chest, the words cower into a dark corner of your mind.

You look down at the bag in your lap, unzipping it to find a couple of fresh sets of clothes. He went to your flat then. A dim sense of propriety is a mildly ashamed that you hadn’t tidied before he saw the place.

The words come back a little when you run your fingers over a t-shirt that was one of your favourites and you open your mouth to try and start the conversation over again. But the stormy look on his face shows that he is not in the mood, and the sharp exit he makes confirms it. You did call him a selfish bastard, after all.

Your emotions are a mess. Remorse, fear, anger, shame all mingle into a soup of indistinguishable sentiment that just leaves you confused and frustrated. The kitchen around you is in a similar state, cupboard doors hanging open, cutlery and cleaning products strewn everywhere. In the middle of the devastation you sit like someone at the bar while everyone else is brawling, fiddling with half empty glass of water.

You look around you, you look into the glass and your first thought is still that you wish it was vodka. After everything, after what Douglas said, everything you stand to lose, everything you’ve already lost, after all that, you still can’t let go. You throw it into the sink and feel a satisfied smirk pull at your lips when you hear the tinkling of shattering glass.

***


	9. Chapter 9

He’s right, sleep eludes you. All night it tantalises you with drooping eyelids and quietened thoughts, only to evade your grasp with a gleefully cruel snap to wakefulness. Your hand remains buried in your t-shirts for most of the night in the absence of a glass to hold on to. You shrug your favourite on when the temperature drops. It’s the one with the DC-10 on the front and four yellow stripes sewn onto the sleeve. They weren’t there when you bought it, in fact you only discover the alteration a few months ago. Douglas uses them as an opportunity to gloat about his natural ability for everything under the sun, but it becomes your favourite t-shirt over night. Not least because of the new label he sewed in proclaiming to all who cared to look that ‘this Captain belongs to Douglas Richardson’.

After looking at the kitchen in the cold light of day, you decide that you are truly sick of the sight of this room. You’re sick of the sight of the living room too, but at least it doesn't look like a bombsite at the moment. It’s painful to instil motion into your limbs after so long a time letting them lie dormant. They crack and creak and ask to be left alone but eventually they cooperate and you are on your way through the door and away from the warzone.

On the sofa is a clear plastic casing with your uniform inside it. Your hat perches on the sofa next to it, gold braid glittering in the light of the sun. You shuffle in an arc until you are face to face with the pair, frowning at them. When did you get here? you ask. The hat twinkles in response and you are interrupted in your communication by the bedroom door opening.

“Oh,” he says, straightening his posture and letting the expression seep from his eyes.

Bits of the speech you endlessly rehearsed during the night comes back to you and you prepare yourself do deliver it to him, a full statement of apology and unconditional surrender. If only you can remember how it starts.

“The taxi will be here in ten minutes,” he cuts in, completely deadpan. “I suggest you get dressed.”

You look down at your t-shirt and the generic jeans that you’ve pulled on, then at the uniform. There’s no stirring of a sense of purpose that there always was when you were getting ready for a flight before. The four stripes on your arm just aren’t the same and they make you feel, even more than the words of the Russian ever could, like a pretend pilot. You pick up the bag and your hat and walk past him. He steps aside and moves away, no hope of any contact whatsoever.

In the bedroom, you dress to a soundtrack of sniffles, tears rolling down your cheeks. You put your trousers on first but pause when it comes to your t-shirt. You run your fingers over the yellow stripes against the worn white fabric and you can’t bear to take it off. In the end you button your uniform shirt up over it, struggle into your jacket and don your cap. A dim feeling of pride returns as you straighten your tie and walk out into the living room, but the feeling is dispelled as soon as you see Douglas leaning nonchalantly on the wall next to the open front door. He indicates to the hallway with a curt nod of the head and you walk on down the stairs to the waiting cab while he locks the door.

In the car you place your hand on the seat between you. He doesn't breach the gap.

***

Preparing the flight plan is forced on you in silence. You’re secretly glad of the distraction and absolutely don’t spend half the time giving Douglas furtive glances while he doesn't even pretend to be busy. Carolyn walks in, instantly notices the tension and walks straight out again with barely a pause. It is much too early in the morning to deal with warring pilots.

On the flight deck, beyond the professional necessity, no words are exchanged. There’s no joke cabin address, either, even though you know he’s got a really good one he’s been saving up. Just as you are preparing yourself for the longest flight of your life, an issue comes up with the runway and your agony is to be prolonged for another ten minutes. Douglas quickly informs Carolyn and Arthur of the news then settles in, face turned away from you.

The ticking from your watch is amplified in the thick silence. Nothing from the speech remains so you try to make up a new one, but the words won’t formulate into coherent phrases let alone sentences. If you can’t even think what you mean, how are you going to say it to him?

The cautious sideway glances you aim at him get longer. You start following the line of his hair as it curls around his ears and over his shoulder. You watch his eyelashes float up and down at random intervals and intently try to get just a glimpse of his eyes.

He twists his head suddenly and shoots you a glare. You look away, chastened and don’t glance back at him until the time ATC has allocated for the runway to be sorted is up. Carl’s voice chirps up again giving you another ten minutes in purgatory. Douglas sighs angrily. It’s not like him to show you his frustrations.

“Morning chaps, still not cleared then?” a bright, gleeful tone pierces the silence. You both tense at the intrusion.

“Not yet, Arthur, another ten minutes.” You try for nonchalant and end up with poorly disguised misery.

“Oh. Okay.” A pause. “Um, Chaps?”

“Yes?” you ask with a sinking feeling.

“Um you seem bit...not talking-y”

“How very perceptive, Arthur. That course in Ipswich was certainly time well spent,” Douglas says brusquely, still looking away from you. Well you aren’t looking at him now, two can play at that game.

“Thanks Douglas,” Arthur smiles, then pauses looking from one pilot to the other repeatedly. “Have you both seen something exciting out of different windows?” he asks innocently.

“What?”

“Well, you’re both looking at different bits of the air field, I thought there was something interesting happening in each bit.”

“Arthur, there is never anything exciting happening in this air field, let alone two things at once,” you say, eyes fixed on the hangar.

“Then why...”

“Arthur, how about you go and make us some coffee,” Douglas suggests, feeling his patience being scratched away.

“But we haven’t even taken off yet. I’ve got a better idea, why don’t we play charades to pass the time?”

“No,” he says in a bored tone.

“Twenty questions?”

“No,” you say.

“I spy?” he suggests weakly, becoming increasingly uncertain when you two still aren’t looking at each other.

“God no,” you say in unison. Your shoulders stiffen but neither of you look at the other.

“Oh. I’ll go make some coffee then. Bye chaps.”

He walks off dejectedly when he doesn't receive a reply, but he is sensible enough to know that he shouldn’t come back with any coffee. Well, Carolyn tells him he shouldn’t.

***

Finally you’ve been cleared for take-off. You’re not sure how much more of this you can take and you have catalogued every inch of your side of the air field, including what you suspect is evidence of the new location of the bar, and now you just can’t wait to get up in the air. The take-off is yours, thank God, and as you prepare yourself, it happens.

You freeze.

You just completely freeze.

The control panel is just a mess of blurred metallic lines, interspersed with gashes of white and spots of red, green and orange that blink eerily at you. You reach out but you don’t know what to do, it’s like the years you’ve spend drilling procedure into your brain have just been erased from your memory and you just don’t remember what to do.

You look down at your blurred hand, see it shaking, and then look at the other, resting on the control column, biting down on it with whitening knuckles. Even then there are little ripples running through the column at the same frequency as your free hand.

“Well?” Douglas prompts grumpily from your right.

His voice is lost in a high pitched wailing in your ears, reaching you a long time after in a low undertone.

“Martin, we’re cleared to go.”

Your heart is thudding so hard it feels like it’s going to break your rib cage and burst your lungs.

“Martin?” His tone is softer. Your eyes flick to him for a microsecond and he’s looking at you again.

All the fears you’ve ever had about flying compound themselves into one solid wall that presses down on you and reminds you of the thousand and one things that could go wrong right now. And pushing its way through the crowd of anxieties to dance at the forefront of your mind is the deep, desperate longing for a drink.

“I...I can’t...I can’t...Douglas...” you whimper. “I just can’t”

“Okay, can you see alright? Can you breathe, Martin? Answer me.”

“No...yes...Douglas...”

“Alright, let me do the take-off, we’ll sort this out once we get in the air, okay?”

“But...the CAA...”

“Bugger the CAA! We are going to fly to Prague and back today and then we are going to talk, understand?”

“Yes.”

“Alright then. Let’s get in the air.”

“You have...you have control...” you sob.

“Thank you.”

Through all the commotion you haven’t noticed. Douglas is holding your hand.

***

“Post take-off checks complete, Martin. Feeling better?”

“A b...a bit, the console isn’t a blur anymore.”

He squeezes your hand and doesn't remove it like you thought he would. You allow the companionable hush to blanket you both, far nicer now that his fingers and palm form a pleasant insulating layer over your hand. All is right with the world, well, flight deck.

“What on earth took so long?”

Then again...

“Carolyn,” Douglas begins in a voice as dangerous as talking to Carolyn will allow.

“When you are cleared for take-off it generally means that you are allowed to move the plane from the tarmac into the big blue thing several thousand feet above it.”

“Carolyn.”

“And why did Douglas take the take-off? And before you even think of denying it, I have been through enough take-offs and landings performed by you two jokers to be able to tell the difference, Martin’s landings are particularly distinct in the memory. When I said ‘Martin you operate out, Douglas you operate back’, surprisingly that is what I meant. Now do you have anything to say for your sorry selves?”

“Oh are we allowed to get a word in edgeways now?” Douglas snaps back.

“You aren’t, Martin is. Martin do you have anything to...”

The flight deck is whizzing past your vision. Carolyn is being pressed into the door with a loud exclamation. You are running away from a confrontation with tears in your eyes, something you haven’t had to do since you were eighteen. You run past a confused looking Arthur with a steaming mug in his hand, burst into the tiny bathroom and vomit into the toilet.

Carolyn is too stunned to move from her position on the door to the flight deck. She hears Arthur mutter ‘skip?’ in very small voice and then the sound of you retching. She looks to Douglas for an answer. He sighs and shakes his head, motioning to the now vacant pilot’s seat.

“Sit down and I shall tell you a tale,” he jokes mournfully.

***

“Oh Martin.”

“Yes. The past few days haven’t been good for him.”

“And then I shouted at him.”

“You weren’t to know.”

“I thought you two were just having a...”

“Lover’s tiff?” Carolyn nods sadly. “Yes, well, there is a reason Arthur was sent to get refreshments before we’d even taken off.”

“What do we do now? He can’t fly a plane while he’s recovering.”

“I managed it.”

She gives him a look.

“You’re you and Martin, God love him, is Martin.”

“Yes, I suppose so.” He watches Carolyn put her head in her hands and heave a sigh while her mind races. “You can’t take MJN away from him, Carolyn. It would kill him.”

She raises her head to look into his eyes and he lets her read him like a book.

“Well I never did,” she says in wonder. “Of all the people I thought you’d fall for, Douglas.”

“Yes, I know.”

“He will need time away, though, you know that don’t you?”

“I tried to introduce the idea to him yesterday in fact.”

“Oh? Didn’t go well, I take it.”

“I really couldn’t say, his reaction was in a register only dogs can hear.”

She laughs in spite of the situation and gets up to leave. She pauses at the door.

“Douglas, be nice.”

***

You approach Carolyn like a man heading towards the guillotine. She stops just in front of you and stares blankly at you. You feel you should say something.

“I...”

“I should probably fire you,” she says abruptly.

You’re cast into a sudden, speechless panic.

“I won’t, God knows I couldn’t keep MJN running if I did. But so help me, Martin...”

“I’m sorry.” It comes out in a wet sniff trying not to be a sob.

“You know what the CAA is like. Spot checks on alcohol levels, at any time, you could cost me my airline, Martin. Now go and do your job before you lose it.”

You retreat to the flight deck which, even with the awkward atmosphere, is preferable to Carolyn’s wrath.

Carolyn was all set to hibernate in the galley with a good bottle of expensive wine ‘left behind’ by an American oil baron on the last flight, but instead she goes to sit next to Arthur who’s obliviously laughing along to Toy Story Three.

“Is skip alright?” he asks, not daring to tear his eyes away from the screen, lest he miss something important.

“Not at the moment, but he will be.”

“Douglas will take good care of him.”

“He’d better do.”

***

You gingerly settle back into the pilot’s seat trying to ignore that Douglas is examining the horizon to his right suspiciously closely. His body is rigid but he seems to vibrate with the effort of keeping his anger contained and his breathing even. His left hand is a closed fist hanging by his side. You can remember that hand being tangled in your hair. It seems such a long time ago.

All the time you’ve spent together merges with the time you’ve spent alone trying to pass your exams, trying to prove to your dad that it’s worth all the time and money and trying to prove to yourself that you can do it. All the times you’ve been shouted at by so many people in a variety of different languages mixes in with them, joined by all the times you’ve been punched, kicked and shoved to the ground. Tears rain down on you like blows from a hammer and it feels like the atmospheric pressure has trebled. Only one thing occurs to you to say.

“I’m sorry.”

He doesn't move a muscle. At first you wonder if he hears you, but the silence in the room, substantial and heavy though it is, will not trap the delicate sound waves that seep from your bashful vocal chords. Which leaves you wondering if he’s ignoring you. That is much more likely.

“Are you?” he mocks sharply.

“Yes,” you reply, the inflection tacked onto the end making it sound like a question, like you’re asking Douglas to tell you what to say to him.

“Good.”

Weighing up the pros and cons of trying to start another conversation with Douglas against the pros and cons of a flight to Prague in complete silence yields a very easy answer for you.

“I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“No.”

“I didn’t mean them.”

“I’m sure.”

“Are you going to say more than two words to me this trip?” your breathless with insensible rage, clenching your fists tightly, pressing them into your thighs to keep them out of trouble.

“Oh so you want to talk now do you? How fickle your mind truly is. Sir,” he douses the last with venom for good measure.

“So you will talk then?”

“That depends,” he replies.

“On what?”

“Your cooperation.”

“On what?”

“On whatever topic I happen to raise.”

“But...that’s hardly fair.”

“I don’t have to talk to you, I’m not contractually obliged to. If you’re going to be difficult, that’s your lookout.”

“Me being difficult?” you splutter. “Fine, spend the trip in silence then.”

“Alright.”

“Fine.”

You last one minute and thirty two seconds.

“Alright, alright, I’ll cooperate,” you say with the air of a surrendering prisoner.   
“Good decision, Captain. First things first, your flat.”

“What about it?”

“You’re moving out of it. You’re going to stay with me, you do a fair bit of the time anyway.”

“But...why?”

“Put it this way, what do you think about when you think of your flat?”

You consider and conjure images of lying oblivious to the world, flat on the floor, surrounded by empty bottles.

“Oh.”

“Exactly, we’ll move some of your things when we get back and go from there.”

“This isn’t quite how I imagined you asking me to move in with you.”

“Well it’s one of the things you forfeited when you started drinking,” he says nastily. “When you’ve done that we can continue with detox and make action plans.”

“What for?”

“Cravings, bad days, stress they will all be much stronger than you’ve had before now your body knows your intent on giving up the booze.”

“What if I can’t...?”

“This is not up for discussion, Martin. If I’m going to help you, you are going to cooperate.”

“If I don’t?”

“Then we look at professional help and I admit defeat and wash my hands of you. Let me make this clear, the alcohol is gone. You will never return to it, ever and if you do, Martin, in any meaningful way that could be construed as anything but a slip up, I can no longer help you. Understood?”

“Yes,” you swallow thickly.

“Good,” he says, satisfied.

“It’s happening so quickly.”

“Well we don’t have the time to mess around, Martin. You don’t have the time. If anyone catches you in withdrawal or with any quantity of alcohol in your system while you are even preparing to fly the plane, you can wave goodbye to your licence, your job and your career. You took seven tries to get that licence. You were lucky to get this job, and spectacularly poor at negotiating. No one will employ you if you lose this job because of alcoholism. You will never fly again.”

You don’t respond for a good while, too lost in the depths of your brain, coaxing your synapses into working and connecting the dots that have been left floating in oblivion for far too long. You stand to lose everything, you see that now, you know that it happens to people, you’ve heard the stories, but never in a million years would you have expected it to happen to you. You always thought you were too sensible for that. Wrong again, so often wrong or perhaps just seeing the world through vision blinkered by the bottle gives you that impression. He looks at you wringing your hands, tears welling up again and deep buried part of himself eases a little.

“I’m sorry it had to happen this way, but I won’t pretend I’m sorry that it happened at all. At least you know now how close you are to destroying everything.”

“Yes, I know.”

You both look forward into the vast expanse of Europe.

“Douglas?” He hums in acknowledgement. “Thank you.”

The feel of his callused fingers sliding underneath yours says progress, a step towards peace accords. The squeeze of his hand says you’re welcome.

***


	10. Chapter 10

You never did own much. You couldn’t afford things really, only the essentials. There aren’t any photos, either, not of family or friends. There weren’t many memories that you wanted to hang onto and certainly not with a prominently displayed visual reminder. You don’t have ornaments or mementoes or bric-a-brac, anything that could be regarded as unnecessary clutter was evicted long ago.

So, only five hours after landing back in Fitton, you are standing in your flat while Douglas is ferrying some of what little you did own. If you look at the place now you will never be able to tell that someone lived there. Douglas’ flight here results in the extradition of all the bottles, empty or otherwise, to the recycling bin. On your cursory walk around while he is moving his Lexus, you check all your hiding places. He’s been through them all, even the ones you sometimes couldn’t find. All but one. One you are pretty sure has remained untouched.

You are deliberately slow as you pack so that he has to leave you alone again to take your clothes down to his car. You pack the rest in double-quick time, throw the bags next to the door and advance on the grimy mirror. Staring at your pale complexion painfully contrasted with the black under your eyes, you feel the familiarity of the scene lift your arm for you, towards the tile in the wall that was loose before you even got to the flat and pull a small bottle of vodka from the hidden cavity.

You sit it on the table next to you and maintain eye contact with it. It winks in the dimming light of the sun, teasing you, flirting. It’s still three quarters full, but you can change that in a heartbeat. You can down as much as your throat will allow and swallow another fifth at least in one go. Or you can be clever about it and take a discrete nip to take the edge off, then secrete it in one of the bags, Douglas will never know.

But then what will you do when the vodka runs out? Rationing can only last for so long before the supply runs dry, in this case literally. Then you will be back to square one, worse than that, you will be battling through withdrawal again only this time without Douglas. He said he’d wash his hands of you and you believe him. Your fingers stroke the cold surface of the bottle of their own accord. They are urging you forward on behalf of your body and mind, so close to their respite and nirvana and yet you stand in their way.

You can’t do this. You don’t want to do this anymore. Life has given you so much in its covert way and you will not let yourself throw it all away for vodka. You snatch your hand away from the bottle and press it firmly into your side, resolved to tell Douglas that he missed one when he returns.

“Well done, Martin,” he intones from behind you. “I’m proud of you.”

You spin rapidly and fall back into the mirror as the dizziness grips you. He is stood with a plastic bin liner in one hand, framed by the doorway.

“How...” You clear your dry throat loudly. “How long have you been there?”

“Long enough,” he says cryptically. “Ready?”

“Yes, I think so.”

You take one last look around to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything vital and then a thought occurs.

“Douglas? Did you know that bottle was there?”

“That, my dear Martin, will forever remain a mystery.” As infuriating as it is, it’s so very Douglas and it’s nice to have that back. You’re pretty sure you know the answer anyway. “Come on then.”

You step hesitantly towards Douglas who holds his hand out with a small smile. You haven’t seen him smile in days; it makes his eyes and the room so much warmer. His hand grasps yours firmly, squeezing to keep you grounded. You smile back at him. It’s foreign to your lips now, something you haven’t been able to persuade them to do in too long but when it comes, it’s like the mountainous weight on your shoulders is easing, stone by stone and Douglas is taking some of the weight for you.

This place you are leaving, you don’t need any more. He’s right, too many bad memories, days when you woke on the floor in a heap because you were too drunk even to reach the sofa before your legs gave out, days when finishing a bottle was annoying but discovering that it was the last bottle you had in the flat, meant the end of the world. Those days are not gone, perhaps, not out behind you with the bottle of vodka left next to the dirty mirror. They’re like his bad days, pushed aside, filed away in his brain in a folder that, despite its age, is never allowed to grow dusty. He needs them like you will, like you do, to remind you of what can happen, and why you are doing this. Why the shakes, the vomiting, the nightmares, the insomnia, the hell, why it’s all worth it, because there are worse things out there.

He squeezes your hand again and you come back to him, still smiling faintly, fragilely. He begins the walk out of the heavy door, one that held your weight as you fumbled with keys, only to curse as they dropped from your stuttering fingers to the floor. You step into the hallway and you don’t look back into the flat, you merely close the door on it then fall in tentative step behind Douglas, fingers still held resolute in his and, for the first time in seven days, your hand doesn’t shake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, there it is, that's taken up two months of my life it's finished i feel strangely bereft. A big, big thank you again to [crocodile_eat_u](http://crocodile-eat-u.livejournal.com/) for betaing. I owe you one and hopefully it'll be finished in the next couple of days.
> 
> uuuh yeh, well i hope it was alright and thank you for sticking with the massively long thing this turned into which, if you are reading this, i assume you did, if you didn't, well, you cheat :P. so yeh, thanks for reading, please comment... thank you for flying MJN air.


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